8:55
PMEkkehard
Stegemann (photo), professor of New Testament at the University of
Basel, has written a provocative essay called "Calvin als Ausleger der
Heiligen Schrift" in the latest issue of Theologische Zeitschrift
65 (2009) 73-89. This Jahrgang is a Festschrift for Martin Anton Schmidt
on his 90th birthday. Calvin's theological engagement with Scripture
involved a good deal of methodological reflection. What is striking
about Calvin's method, argues Stegemann, is his hermeneutical
consciousness, that is, his awareness of how methodology shapes our
interpretation of texts. Stegemann rightly assesses Calvin's thought as
a model of Christian thinking that can help us shape a distinctive
religious philosophy.

8:48
PMIn the July
2009 issue of Bible Translator (vol. 60), Tommy Wasserman
proposes a new rating system in Greek New Testament editions that takes
into account both external and internal evidence. He makes some good
arguments, though my sympathies lie more with Keith Elliott's view that
the whole notion of a rating system is "patronizing spoon-feeding" and
ought to be scrapped altogether.

8:35
PMIn 1
Corinthians, Paul had a game plan for the church. He exhorts the
believers there to be united around Christ. I have found that where the
church is not first vertical, first rich in God, first correctly related
to the Lord Jesus Christ, it will be poor in its horizontal
relationships. And when a church is not spiritually united around the
Lord, its exploits for God in the world will be severely challenged.
Love God. Love your brothers and sisters in Christ. Then, as the bond of
love with Christ and with each other is secured, we will be able to
reach out to a hurting world. I truly believe that, if our churches are
to develop a far-reaching vision for the world and a plan to influence
others for Christ, we must learn the lesson of 1 Corinthians. Any group
of believers must be constantly called back to the Lord Jesus Christ, to
brotherly love, and to love for the lost.

This was just one of the themes discussed
in class today during Alan Knox's lecture on 1 Corinthians. And an
excellent lecture it was. Look for Alan to post audio of his talk
tomorrow on his website.

8:31
PMThis just in.
It's a photo of a prayer meeting held this morning in Gondar, Ethiopia.
It brought tears to my eyes. The people were praying for Becky.

This note came with
the photo:

Dearest Mama B,

Today was a very special day for me here in Gondar; as I wrote you
this morning we had been praying for your health. The evangelists
and I started praying. But as soon as we start praying others who
were in the church for other program join us in the prayer. Every
body was enthusiastically praying here and there in the church
building. We prayed for complete healing, for Papa B’s strength and
for your ministry; so we strongly believe God will make miracles in
your health and ministry. I will write you more in the following
days; all the evangelists and the entire people have sent their
greetings and love.

Please know that
we will continue to pray for you even after every body is back home.
We can hardly wait to see you again!

Your brother, Tilahun

8:25
PMI want to express my
gratitude to Josh Mann for his
review of my latest book, The Jesus Paradigm.

7:55
PMIt is my pesky duty to
point you to Ken Carter's essay on
The Problems and Possibilities of Healing. Mr. Carter doesn't touch
on all the aspects of biblical healing, but he does make some excellent
points. As you can well imagine, this topic has become a front burner
issue for me in recent days.

7:43
PMCraig Adams asks
Is There Wisdom on Twitter? He notes: "Because of the 140 character
limit, it's not a good medium for extended debate. (And given the
acrimony so often displayed in debates among Christians, maybe that's a
good thing.)"

Tuesday, September
29

6:36
AMWithout Jesus,
the 5,000 would have gone home hungry. No matter what we offer to Jesus
(our fish, our loaves, our talents, our resources, etc.), it is He who
must do the work if anything is to be accomplished.

Lord Jesus, with prayerful expectancy I
leave for campus this morning. Like the 70 of old, I've tightened my
sandals, taken a deep breath, and marched out to serve you. Thank you
for filling my life with purpose and meaning. Serving you is thrilling,
awesome. I am but a common foot soldier in your army. Help me to follow
you, my Commander, wholeheartedly! I ask this in your name, Lord Jesus.
Amen.

6:32
AMNot everyone
agrees that all of the so-called Prison Epistles were written from Rome.
For a minority perspective, see Bo Reicke's
Caesarea, Rome, and the Captivity Epistles. Reicke was my
Doktorvater in Basel.

6:24
AMSpeaking of
brotherly love (and admonition), Tommy Wasserman calls our attention to
a new website devoted to
KJV-Onlyism. The debate over the KJV is alive and well where I live.
And it is most unfortunate. Beware of "professional weaker brothers,"
people for whom gray doesn't exist. Unless you adhere to their narrow
list of do's and don'ts you are sub-Christian, pure and simple. I know
of many Christians who live in deadly fear of such people. My advice to
you is: Stop! You must realize that while some KJV-advocates are
motivated by sincere love of the Word and love of the brethren, others simply want control. We
must confront them, in love, but confront them nonetheless. The
"look-down-on-others-because-they-do-not-use-the-KJV" position is not a
lifetime option. Above all, we must not allow professional weaker
brothers and sisters to scuttle our evangelistic efforts.

6:12
AMIn New
Testament Theology class tomorrow
Alan Knox will be speaking on the assembling of the church according
to 1 Corinthians 12-14. All are cordially invited to attend this guest lecture. We meet in Adams 211. Alan's lecture begins at 2:00
sharp. At the heart
of this great passage is the Love Chapter. Gilbert Tennent (1703-1764)
once preached a sermon called "Brotherly Love Recommended by the
Argument of the Love of Christ," in which he exhorted his congregation
in Philadelphia to greater love for one another.

He observed that the closer Christians get
to each other the more they learn of each other's faults. It is at this
crucial point, he said, that they must move forward in pain and
self-discipline to perfect their love for one another in spite of
their obvious differences. This is courageous Christianity at its best!
And it sometimes involves admonition and loving confrontation. I know
this theme is near and dear to brother Alan. I am eager to learn more
from him what it means to have an honest, open, and loving interaction
with other Christians at intimate levels.

6:07
AMMy colleague
Andreas Köstenberger discusses such issues as the "husband of one wife"
requirement and the question of whether churches should have deaconesses
in his excellent essay
The New Testament Pattern of Church Government (.pdf).

6:05
AMWe all owe
John Anderson a great debt for his
sound advice on applying to Ph.D. programs. May God bless you at Baylor, John!

11:50
AMA week from
today Becky and I will have the wonderful privilege of being on the
campus of Houston Baptist
University to talk about language learning as well as Ethiopia. I
couldn't be more excited. This will be my first ever visit to HBU.

According to the organizers,
here's what we're told our schedule looks like:

12:00pm to
12:50pm -- Greek Classes (we'll combine our two 1st year
Greek students, and one 2nd year Greek class):

1:00pm to ??
-- LUNCH: We will have you for lunch at our campus dining facility
(yes, the silly ambiguity was intended!:). It will be informal, all
of our BA and MA students in BL will be invited to come and eat and
pepper you with all kinds of questions.

2:30/3:00pm to
5:00pm -- Free Time

5:00pm to 6:00pm
-- Depart for DINNER: We will have a private dinner with just the
MA students (and spouses) and several of our BL and Biblical studies
professors (and spouses).

All of this is part of a scheduled 10-day
trip to Texas that begins this Thursday, Lord willing. We'll be
presenting the Ethiopia work to churches in Dallas and Houston and also
meeting up with missionary friends from the past. Our desire is to give
God all the glory and to consider it a great mercy on His part that He
has used us in His service. We are so unworthy of this task!

11:22
AMWonderful
devotions today from 2 Cor. 4. Here we get a great description of God's
power in weakness. Paul, the fragile vessel, says he was "afflicted in
every way but not crushed." The REB says he was "hard-pressed but never
cornered." I love that! Paul then goes on to produce one of the New
Testament's greatest word plays when he writes "aporoumenoi but
not exaporoumenoi." Furnish, in his commentary, translates this
as "despairing, but not utterly desperate," while Garland prefers
"stressed but not stressed out."

Paul's honesty is refreshing. No rigid
Stoicism here! Here are some takeaways I jotted down in my notebook:

God works through my weaknesses,
limitations, and failures.

I cannot do anything without
His power.

My weakness is necessary if I am to
preach the folly of the cross.

God's means of making us strong is by
making us weaker and weaker until the divine power alone is seen in
our lives.

One last observation: Note that Paul uses
the plural. It wasn't just he who needed to learn these lessons. You can
bet your bottom dollar that everyone on his mission team felt exactly
the same way.

Let me end this post with a hymn of praise
that Paul sang in Eph. 3:20-21. May it encourage your heart as much as
it has mine:

Now all glory to God,
who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to
accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him
in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever
and ever! Amen.

11:06
AMThe Axis of
Evil has now been reduced to
a Spoke. When Hillary goes to the United Nations to make her case
for war with Amadinejad, it will be just like the good old days of U.S.
foreign policy. The historian Daniel Boorstin was right when he said
that planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting
cut flowers.

10:24
AMJust a note to mention how blessed I've
been to read Becky's essays written in the midst of her suffering. Thus
far she has written 10 of them. I'm reminded of what Paul said in 2 Cor.
1:6 -- that his troubles contributed to the welfare of the friends to
whom he was writing. He hoped that the encouragement of his example
would deepen their dependence on their Lord. Becky has consistently
demonstrated the sustaining power of God to keep her. No doubt this is
one reason she receives so many emails from like-minded sufferers.

But, you ask, isn't your mission work
hampered as a result? The answer is yes only if we think of missions as
traveling in person to some far-off mission field. Like Paul, we seek to
be a "savor of Christ" to others wherever we are, and this can be
accomplished just as effectively, I suppose, through a website as
through a mission trip. Our greatest concern to save the lost by
whatever means God gives us, for it is the task of every Christian
to share what he or she enjoys.

A hearty "thank you," then, to all who
have so graciously expressed their love and appreciation to my wife. We
are all struggling -- every one of us -- with uncharted territory. But
isn't it nice to know that we don't have to travel down the highway
alone?

10:06
AMI've noted
with interest the number of conferences these days on church leadership,
most of them having to do with preaching. As I read the New Covenant of
Hebrews 8, I wonder if our emphasis should be elsewhere. Here the author
(Paul, of course!) refers to a Christocentric fraternity of normal,
everyday "laypeople" whose job is to "know the Lord" personally (without
the mediation of any so-called "expert") and then do their jobs daily to
the glory of God as His servants. It is the layperson, not the leader,
that forms the spearhead of the missio Dei. Any conference that
focuses on leadership should, I would imagine, seek a larger role for
the laity in both the teaching and witnessing functions of the church.
The church gathers for mutual edification for the very purpose of being
dispersed out into society. Unfortunately, nearly all the conferences on
church leadership I've been acquainted with seem magnetically attracted
to treating primarily (or even exclusively) the place and function of
the ordained clergy. I'm wondering if I'm an oddball exegete in thinking
that every Christian is an equally valuable vessel in the Master's
house, and that conferences on the biblical characteristics of a church
should display this truth more prominently.

9:49
AMI am amazed at
how many churches in the South have the word "Corinth" in their names.
The Corinthian church was riddled with factions and cliques. They had
their Paulites, their Cephasites, their Appollites, just as today we
have our ____ ites (you can fill in the blank based on your favorite
theologian or preacher). Then there was the Christ-party, the
"Christites." I imagine they were the most troublesome of them all. They
were "above" such worldly and fleshly cliquishness.

I'm glad to be associated with a local
group of Jesus-followers at The Hill who are glad to be known as
"brothers and sisters"!

I,
henceforth, REPENT of any involvement I have had in speaking harshly
(or inappropriately) against any one translation or another and or
against any particular Bible publishing company and its marketing
strategies, or against particular people or persons who promote one
translation philosophy over or against another.

Doing so, I
feel has cause me to loose focus on what really matters: To know God (and being known by
him), and to make him known.
This can adequately be accomplished with any one English translation
of the Bible or another and not necessarily one specific English
translation or another necessarily.

9:38
AMDavid Rausch,
a church history professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, has written a
disturbing book called
A Legacy of Hatred: Why Christians Must Not Forget the Holocaust.
Rausch concludes that the church failed the Jews during the holocaust by
not doing all it was possible to do on their behalf. Rausch cites the
words of a delegate to the 1950 Synod of the Evangelical Church in
Germany: "In every train which carried Jews to their death-camp in the
East, at least one Christian should have been a voluntary passenger." In
1945, Martin Niemöller (photo) declared, "If we had been ready to go
with Him to death, the number of victims might well have been only some
ten thousand." In 1946 he asserted, "Christianity in Germany bears a
greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS
and the Gestapo."

The German theologian Christoph Blumhardt
once said, "First the human being must become a Christian. Then the
Christian must become a human being. And this second conversion is
sometimes missing." His point? We are called by God not only to live
in Christ but to live in the world. After World War II the German
Kirchentag called the church to be the church where it was. The
evangelical academies, like the ones at Bad Boll or Bad Liebenzell,
called tradesmen and businessmen together to recapture their Christian
citizenship and put it to work in their vocations.

I pray that all of my students catch a
glimpse of this vision of the kingdom. The church must understand that
it is not a church to be served but a work force to be deployed. We
cannot shun the hard places or the difficult task. We must even risk
death if necessary for the sake of the Gospel.

Are you willing to do that? Am I?

Sunday, September
27

8:20
PMWanna come
with me as I water one of our herds? This group of Angus is in what we
call the "ripple field." Here's their water trough. All we have to do is
turn on the spigot.

Of course, we need to take the
dogs with us. But for now we'll keep them out of the pasture. Angus
mamas can be real protective of their calves, and rambunctious little
Chloe and Daisy might get themselves into a heap of trouble without even
realizing it.

Here the dogs have started a
scrum. Dayda just got the worst of it, as everyone piles on.

I see that Daisy has found a cow
horn to chew on. Never know what yummy objects you'll find in our
pastures!

I also never
met a dog that didn't enjoy a tummy rub. Dadya is in third heaven.

Well, I see that the tub is
full. Thanks aplenty for your help. I enjoyed your company!

5:18
PMAmericans can
be so kind to their neighbors. We saw proof of this during the Muslim day
of prayer on Capitol Hill. Here's a sampling:

"Gee, I wonder if Obama will be there
to greet his brothers, and show his true colours to the Americian
people? Good place for a bomb if any time. Sorry, but if you don’t
get them, they’ll get us. Let’s face it this is what they are aiming
for."

Friends, mercy surpasses judgment. This
truth seems to have been forgotten by the pitiless line of preachers
excoriating homosexuals these days and calling down fire from heaven on
Muslims. God's justice is part of His love. I maintain that we must make
a choice -- a conscious decision -- to love others, even our enemies,
and do good to those who hate and persecute us. When I asked Tesfaye
(photo) what he was doing to reach the men in his village who had
beheaded his 8-year old daughter and threw her decapitated body down the
village well, he stated simply, "We do two things. First, we live holy
lives. We don't lie, cheat, or commit adultery. Secondly, we love and
forgive our enemies."

That attitude strikes me as centrally
important. As the problems of evil, suffering, and hatred proliferate
everywhere, we find ourselves faced with a choice. We must vigorously
reject our nasty habit of getting back and getting even or, still worse,
praying imprecatory Psalms on lost people. Naked and poor, they
desperately need the Gospel. And faith invites us to risk everything to
tell them about the Savior.

So where do we go from here? The fields
are white unto harvest, and you've been drafted. You can bless or curse.
I would suggest that you ask God to bring to mind a handful of people
who are prime candidates for salvation. Then serve them. I cannot begin
to tell you how critically important it is for the sake of the Gospel to
discover that we are servants. Are you serving? Are you cultivating
relationships with those who are vastly different from you? Jesus set
the example. It's service with no strings attached. Service with no
"holier-than-thou" baggage. It's service motivated by one thing and only
one thing: love.

Love? Sorry, we're too busy hating.

4:38
PMRumor has it
that the bigger the church, the better. That noses and nickels matter
most. It's a rumor, folks. You'll be delighted to know that God uses
churches of all sizes and shapes -- big and small. Today we met
with a fascinating, radiant Christian community called Messiah Baptist
Church. This small church is breaking down Everest-sized barriers in the
community by simply being the hands and feet of Jesus to their
neighbors. Wow! Folks, isn't it about time we got back to the Bible's
way of moving people toward Christ?

But there I go preaching again. The real
point of this post is to say how much Becky and I enjoyed our time at
Messiah this morning. As always. Becky was phenomenal as she presented
what the Lord Jesus is doing in Burji, Gondar, and Alaba. Afterwards we
had a pow-wow with anyone interested in possibly coming with us next
July. Would you believe that about half of the adults in the
congregation attended? Just talking with them fired me up about reaching
the lost and sacrificing my time and talents for the Muslims, the
animists, and the Orthodox of Ethiopia.

Our being at Messiah today was no
accident. I firmly sense in my spirit that the time has come for them to
send a team along with us. I sense in this congregation the glory of
God. The glory of God is not something to mess around with. To replace
it with a lesser glory is nothing but idolatry. Here is, I sense, a
group of simple followers of Jesus who are heaven-bent on reaching the
community around them -- and the world -- with the love of
Christ. We're co-laborers for God. As iron sharpens iron, I would love
to spend time in Ethiopia with some of the people of Messiah.

So we'll see whom the Lord appoints to
come with us. Meanwhile, if you're a redemptive person, thank the Lord
for giving you that desire. All of us are commissioned by Jesus to
prepare webs of relationships whereby others come to know Him. This next
week would be a good time for me to reach out to lost scholars, lost
students, gas station attendants -- whomever! -- with a smile and maybe
(as the Lord opens the door) with a loving word about Jesus. Wow, do I
love the Gospel. Like a good steak, let it sizzle, hiss, and spit!

P.S. You thought you'd get away without me
showing some pix, did you? Think again!

8:24
AMOur focus this
morning at Messiah will be on Alaba, which is a wonderful region of
Ethiopia that is 99 percent Muslim. We affectionately call it "Dusty
Alaba."

The region is dry and hot.
Typhus and typhoid are endemic. At any given time one third of the
population suffers from malaria. For our July 2010 trip we are wanting
to do simple Bible teaching both to children and adults. How easy it is for us to fall into the
snare of placing men's words above God's Word. We who were predestined
to be conformed to the image of His Son go about preferring the example
of others to the Perfect Model. Our Lord was careful again and again to
stress all-out devotion to Him. We are complete only in Him. The simpler
our faith, the better.

I am especially eager for
someone to come who can teach the people what a healthy New Testament
church looks like. This will include, of course, teaching about
suffering. While the
modern church seeks medals, the early Christians wore scars. Being true
to God did not put them at the top of the ladder but at the bottom rung.
This is true today in Alaba.

So the question is, "Who will go with us?"
We can take up to 4 people to Alaba. I am eager to see who, if anyone,
the Lord Jesus has chosen from Messiah to make the trip of a lifetime.
Stay tuned....

7:48
AMBecky reports
"All systems go." MBC, here we come!

7:23
AM"The reason there are so many prima donnas in the
pulpit is that we have given the messenger more honor than the message.
We need someone to be for us what we are not for ourselves."
Lloyd Ogilvie.

7:17
AMDo I detect a
typo in the ETS annual meeting program? On Tuesday at 10:10 am, Myron
Kauk of Liberty University is scheduled to read a paper called "Rehab: A
Case in Old Testament Ethics." Just wondering....

Saturday, September 26

8:06
PMTwo items of
praise:

1) When our electricity blinked a couple
of hours ago, I lost everything on my blog in Front Page. It was gone!
Thanks to the Lord's help I was able to figure out how to get it back
from the web. But it took me two hours!

2) We haven't heard from Oshe yet but my
heart is at peace about the vehicle. It's such a relief to know that the
whole work of missions is God's task, and not ours. Sometimes ministry
is very puzzling, and we try to anticipate what God will do. But God is
the supreme fisherman, and He knows how to go about making disciples. It
is not our job to tell Him what to do. It is our job to be obedient
servants, nothing more. I am a shameless advocate of praying about a
matter and then leaving it in God's hands. Then, when God directs you to
do something, do it. It will be your privilege to see His good hand at
work in you, a weak vessel.

All praise to Jesus!

5:50
PMRight now Bec
is cooking liver and onions for supper. With mashed potatoes. Been
waiting all day for this treat.

3:24
PMSure is nice
to have Becky up and walking again and doing normal kinds of things. I
even hear the bread maker going in the kitchen. God has been soooooooo
good to us!

3:22
PMThe Synoptic
Problem keeps swimming around in my head like hungry koi. History
declares that there is an answer to it. It agrees that Matthew was our
earliest Gospel, and that it was intended for a largely Jewish-Christian
audience.

"Oh," you say, "there you go again, Dave,
dragging the church fathers into it. I can't believe what they
say!"

Let's be ruthlessly honest. How many
Markan priorists have carefully, thoroughly, and
objectively examined the external evidence in detail? If they have,
I have rarely seen it discussed in their books. That's why it seems to
me highly appropriate that the church fathers be taken into
consideration. We snap our fingers at history and tell it to take a
hike. Little wonder the Synoptic Problem is considered insolvable.

Just my opinion, but I believe the academy
has been stuck and stuffy for too long. The evidence must be faced. It
took me a week of translating the Greek and Latin fathers in an abbey in
West London before I realized how convincing their testimony was. I
suppose it's necessary to add that in my own teaching I expose my
students to the leading options today, including the Oxford (Two
Source), Griesbach (Two Gospel), Farrer, and Independence Hypotheses,
then ask them to make up their own minds.

It was my eagerness to see that people
were given an exposure to the various solutions that prompted me to
organize a conference on our campus back in 2000, the papers from which
may be found
here. I don't claim for a moment that I am the only one who sees the
heart of the problem. I used to puzzle about the Synoptic Problem as
much as the next person. Then I read the fathers, and they left no doubt
in my skeptical mind that they got it right and we got it wrong.

My simple question, fellow bloggers, is
this: Shall we not fail miserably as New Testament scholars if we fail
to come to grips with evidence that God Himself has generously given us?
If you want to see a contemporary response to the Synoptic Problem that
takes seriously the evidence of the fathers, with fresh translations
from the Greek and Latin, I might point you to
Why Four Gospels? In writing it, I owed a great deal to Dom Bernard
Orchard, whose views I merely tried to summarize. It is a simple book in
which we have tried to paint the main features of the landscape with a
broad brush. If you like it, great. If you don't, tell me why. I hope to
revise it next year, adding a chapter addressing the reaction to what we
call the "Fourfold Gospel Hypothesis."

Dismounting my hobby horse now....

2:45
PMI just LOVE
Becky's paraphrase of Jesus' Great Commission: "Take the message I've given you to every
person in the world. Teach them to follow Me." You can read that, and
much more, at the
Bethel Hill blog, which Becky just updated.

Die Zeit Online is reporting
today about the
lack of priests in the Catholic Church in Germany. More than half of
parish posts have yet to be filled. There is, of course, no hint among
the earliest records that the early church recognized "priests" as a
special class within the church. Not to put too fine an edge on it, the
early church was a highly participatory body devoted to every-member
ministry. This, of course, is the exception rather than the rule today,
even in our Protestant churches. If we are to see a widespread explosion
of participation by church members there has to be a revolution in our
thinking about the priesthood.

11:30
AMOne of my
Greek students just sent me this wonderful testimony:

Learning Greek has
been like going jogging for me. When I started taking Greek back in
January, I weighed 256 lbs and couldn't run 30 feet or climb a
flight of stairs without having a mild heart attack. I did not like
to run because I could not run. Now that I'm 199 lbs and can lick
two, three, or four miles and recover in just five or six minutes, I
really enjoy running. In fact, I bought new running shoes last
night that will only be used for running -- and I've already put two
miles on them this morning! So it is with Greek -- now that I know
just a smidgen, I'm eager to learn more, and studying is not near
the drudgery that it once was. Once I could jog a little, I wanted
to jog more. Once I learned a little Greek, though difficult at
first, it is much easier and more enjoyable to learn new material.

I wrote back:

Great analogy. Greek,
though, is more like a marathon. Students who got A's in their
classes no longer can read a single sentence of the language. How
sad. I pray it doesn't happen to you. The key? Stay in the text.
Read a little bit every day. You'd be surprised at what you will see
in even "familiar" passages. May God help us all to be faithful to
use what we've worked so hard to acquire by His grace!

Will you stay in the race or drop
out?

11:12
AMIt's official
now. Iran is a phantasmagoria of evil, the central player in the world's
struggle between civilization and chaos. The American public must not,
under any circumstances, ask why. Of course, the "discovery" at Qom is
just the incendiary pretext needed to settle old scores and forge an
American Empire in the Middle East. Maybe somebody should point out the
fallaciousness of such thinking. Oh wait --
somebody already has.

9:30
AMNew Testament
Greek students! Check out this
list of
Greek resources at Brian Fulthorp's blog. Of course, there's no
point in accumulating resources unless you actually use them.

9:18
AMThe Better Bibles Blog notes how
translators do not always
get the math right. The post reminded me of the controversy that
swirled around a verse in Acts several years ago (20:9):

Seated in a window was
a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as
Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the
ground from the third story and was picked up dead.

Continental scholars argued that Eutychus
fell some 40 feet, while Americans insisted that he must have fallen
only 30 feet or so. Wikipedia
explains:

In most of
continental Europe, as well as the British Isles and much of the
Commonwealth
and Latin America,
the floor at the ground level is the ground floor and the
floor above is the first floor....

In North American
usage ... the floor at the ground level is usually, but not always,
the first floor and the floor above is the second floor....

Either way, Eutychus was dead, so this
tempest in a teapot soon faded from memory. As the Wikipedia entry
notes:

It is obvious that
this can lead to some confusion, but little else can be done other
than being aware of this issue.

P.S. When I was studying in Basel, Becky
and I lived in a tiny one-room apartment on what the Swiss called the
parterre. You might call it a cross between the basement and the ground
floor. Of course, no Swiss would ever be caught living in such humble
circumstances, so most of the time the parterre was rented out to
foreigners. The stigma associated with our dwelling place never bothered
us. We were happy just to be in Basel.

8:34
AMI've just
published an essay on the Lord's Supper. It's called
A First
Small Step. Is your church ready to take it?

8:06
AMAre two "new
covenants" in view in Hebrews 7-10? You can get Rod Decker's take
here (.pdf).

7:56
AMHenry Stimson,
the diplomat of the World War II era, once said, "The only way to make a
man trustworthy is to trust him." That saying gnawed at me this morning
as I read Acts 14:23:

Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in
every church. With prayer and fasting, they turned the elders over
to the care of the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.

Presumably Paul felt that the young
churches in Asia which he had planted only a few weeks earlier could
stand on their own, apart from his presence and leadership. In my mind,
there's something that doesn't compute about appointing men as leaders
who had been Christians for less than 3 or 4 months. Could it be that
Paul believed in the power of the Holy Spirit? Could it be that he saw
in these men a maturity that the people could not help but respect?
Ronald Reagan had no foreign-policy experience when he became president,
yet he had more than a little to do with ending the Cold War. Likewise,
Paul took an extraordinary step when he refused to settle down as his
convert's "pastor." The fact is that they already had a "Senior Pastor,"
and their elders could rely upon Him for direction.

In a week I'll be sending my Greek
students home with their first exam. When they return to class they will
grade their own exams. Are they trustworthy? "The only way to make a man trustworthy is to
trust him."

Friday, September 25

10:06
PMI had a
craving for pancakes this evening. So Becky and I had some. It was a
joint effort. Becky located the batter (hey, I just live here), and I
cooked.

Afterwards we sat around doing
this and that, our faithful furry friends keeping us company. With Nate
and Jess out of town we're keeping Sheppie, who in this photo appears as
snug as a bug in a rug.

Thus another day at Rosewood
comes to an end. Sleep tight everyone.

8:23
PMJust heard
from Nate. He and Jessie attended a funeral at Arlington National
Cemetery today, then drove to her mom and dad's home in Maryland.
They've arrived safety and everyone is doting on Nolan, something I
never do, of course. We always miss the Blacks when they're traveling.
Have a great time you guys, and try not to miss us too much.

7:06
PMThis weekend
I'm reading a great book in German. It's called Englisch für
Fortgeschrittene (English for the Advanced). What a superb
way to learn a foreign language -- study it backwards! I do something
similar with my Greek students. Each quiz and exam I offer has an extra
credit section that requires English-Greek translation. I am convinced
that the ability to exegete the New Testament in Greek is dependent upon
our ability to read, and to a degree to think, in the language.

6:28
PMAmerican
Christians continue to espouse the orthodoxy of freedom and justice for
all even as we breathe fire and brimstone against Muslims who want to
pray at the nation's capitol. We are getting good at holding
opposing ideas. It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that the "test of a
first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in
mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Cozy up
to Lady Liberty while slamming Islam. What first-rate minds we have.

Might I suggest that God doesn't
ask us to back an unbeliever into a corner to mash him or her with our
mental machinery? He's not asking us to back up our Gospel dump trucks
and pull the lever. There are any number of things we can do to get
people to Calvary, but, last time I looked, name calling and protests
weren't included.

3:30
PMIn theology
class recently we discussed the seventeenth chapter of John's Gospel.
Let me outline what I said. (Much of what we discussed was based on an
essay I wrote several years ago for a somewhat obscure journal called
the Criswell Theological Review. The essay is titled "Structure
and Style in John 17." If you would like a copy, let me know.)

The church consists of people who know God
personally through Jesus Christ. These people come from many different
cultures and backgrounds. There are as diverse as diverse can be. Yet
they are all one, united in the very same way that Jesus is united with
His Father. What does this unity look like? This is a question to which
scholars have given many different answers. What is absolutely certain
is that unity does not mean uniformity. It has nothing whatsoever to do
with bland sameness. It involves a unity of spirit, an identity of
purpose, and a commitment to brotherly love. One evangelical scholar
argues that the church is like a huge army marching under different
regimental banners. It is not supremely important what regiment we
belong to. What matters is that we all follow the commanding officer.

I resonate with this analogy. For many
years now I have reenacted the American Civil War. Each regiment has its
own customs, flags, esprit, and idiosyncrasies. Yet despite the fact
that the army marches under many different flags, each regiment is
expected to obey the commanding officer and work together as a unit.

As followers of Christ, we must never
forget that Jesus came into the world to inaugurate the kingdom of God.
In this kingdom, national and tribal allegiances are unimportant. They
are superseded by our loyalty to our Commander-in-Chief. If, by a
miracle, unity ever became a "first order" category in our
Bible-believing, evangelical churches, evangelism might become our one
overmastering passion. I am told that as a Baptist I must fight for
Baptist distinctives. Some would go further. They would say that I am
not to eat the Lord's Supper with those who hold to "wrong doctrine" --
pedobaptism, for example. How avidly we cling to our distinctives! But
our supreme aim can NEVER be to exalt our own regiment. The Commander
asks us to follow Him. And if we make that our aim, surely we
will realize that the things that unite us in the kingdom are much more
important than the things that divide us.

In a word, evangelicals are to be a people
who are united for the Gospel. The kingdom of God transcends every
manmade barrier we can erect -- race, education, gender, color,
background, nationality. Think of the leadership of the church in
Antioch (Acts 13:1). They had a Cypriot (Barnabas), a dark-skinned man
(Simeon "the black"), a North African (Lucius from Cyrene), an
aristocrat (Manaen, a member of the Herodian family), and a Jew (Saul of
Tarsus). What made their joint leadership possible? I dare say that the
"fellowship of the Spirit" (Phil. 2:1) was more important to them than
their obvious differences. That humble attitude paid handsomely. The
congregation at Antioch became a missionary sending church, as every
local church should be.

I believe that most churches today could
do a great deal more to encourage this outlook. We can hold city-wide
meetings with other congregations, or we can combine services with the
church next door, or we can come together for prayer meetings. Perhaps
this would help us catch a glimpse of the true catholicity of the
church. It is necessary to emphasize that we must depend completely on
the Holy Spirit if we are to achieve such unity. The Spirit was given to
us, not to make us comfortable, but to make us missionaries. It was the
Spirit who drove Paul and the other early missionaries to "struggle
together in one soul for the faith of the Gospel" (Phil. 1:28). It is He
who dismantles our pride and enables the lovely fruit of the Spirit to
take root in our lives. This, I believe, is what Jesus prayed for in
John 17 -- a church whose fellowship was real and vibrant, and a church
devoted to evangelism.

When the Spirit is freely welcomed among
us again, who knows what the results might be?

P.S. I should note that I do not reenact
the Civil War because I seek to glorify that war or any war for that
matter. Quite the opposite. I seek to educate the public about what life
was like in the encampments of the period.

I am also privileged to preach to many
reenactors during our period worship services on Sunday mornings. The
reenacting community is a largely unreached mission field, full of
people who are seeking peace of mind and forgiveness of sin. What a joy
to be able to tell them about the Savior.

2:14
PMThankful that
Becky continues to do well today. None of evil's ramifications change
ultimate reality, of course. God is not just "out there." "He is," as
Francis Schaeffer used to put it, "there, and He has spoken." He
has entered our pain and suffering. He understands.

2:10
PMMy Romanian
grandmother lived in Campbell, Ohio, a suburb of Youngstown. I recall
visiting her several times when I was growing up in Hawaii. She ran a
general store on the first floor and lived upstairs. A notice stood by
her doorbell:

Store Below. Residence Above.

This has become my perspective on
life. I believe we cannot make the world our focus. And we dare not, as
Christians, be bound by prejudices based on nationalism. The temptation
to political activism, thinking we can "reclaim America," is almost
irresistible today.

The church is in constant danger
of degenerating into a political action group. Alas, many Christians
cannot see this. I am assaulted daily with emails from evangelical
organizations whose one purpose is to defend "Christian America." But
our allegiance can never be to any manmade cause, and never to an
earthly kingdom.

This may sound trite, but it isn't.

10:58
AMOne of the
greatest challenges we face in Ethiopia has to do with leadership
training.

1) Most of the "ministry" in Ethiopia is
done by ordained clergy who are seminary trained and are paid for their
ministry. Often the people perceive them to be the ministers of
the church. Becky and I are committed to involving more of the Body in
ministry. And we are training the leaders of the local churches to do
their best to equip others (2 Tim. 2:2).

2) The resident seminaries in Ethiopia are
usually geared to training academically superior leaders who are
required to dislocate themselves from their homes and communities for at
least 3 years. This model of education, as I have often said, is beset
with 3 problems: extraction, expense, and elitism. Extracting leaders
from their communities is very expensive and often leads to a sense of
elitism among the graduates. We prefer to train leaders in their home
environments. We do not believe that servants-in-training need to be
uprooted from their homes. Nor do we believe that theological education
need involve formal schooling; indeed, traditional theological
education is, we are sadly discovering, often a disadvantage.

3) We believe that the best leadership
development occurs in local churches. Students should be living in their
homes, serving in their churches, and active in their communities as
they exercise teaching, preaching, administrative, and evangelistic
functions. Again, our experience has shown that when we extract students
from their culture, many of them are unwilling or unable to return to
the towns from which they came.

4) What should be the curriculum of
leadership training? We believe that the best textbook is the Bible
itself. Hence the scholar-teachers who come with us to Ethiopia do
verse-by-verse exposition of a book of the Bible with a constant focus
on practical ministry.

I suppose our convictions might be
summarized as follows.

All believers are called to be
ministers in building the kingdom of God.

Spiritual leaders have the
responsibility to equip all members of the Body to serve.

Theological education is best
accomplished on site rather than in faraway seminaries.

Theological education finds its
fulfillment within the framework of the local church.

The proper end of all theological
training is ministry, not degrees or ordination.

The aim of teaching is not to impart
knowledge but to produce obedient disciples.

If a man is seminary-trained but not
living in a manner that is obedient to the commands of the Lord
Jesus, he is not qualified to lead.

Below: Kevin Brown of Mount Pleasant
Baptist Church in North Wilkesboro, NC, teaching the book of Ephesians
to church elders in Alaba.

10:32
AM"I
believe that elders demonstrate their maturity and Christlikeness most
when they are not seen and not heard but are instead serving in
obscurity by leading, teaching, shepherding, and overseeing in ways that
demonstrate the humility and gentleness of the Spirit of Christ." Alan
Knox.

9:55
AMBecky's series
on her cancer journey continues with an essay called
Pain.

9:52
AMGood news.
Oshe and Daniel have arrived in Addis and are now looking at the
vehicle. Is this the right one for the Galana clinic? The Lord knows.

9:43
AMWhat a relief.
Our president strides rather than struts onto the stage of history. Say
what you will about Mr. Obama, the man exudes quiet confidence.

W. had a swagger, but O. is more
like Reagan, a master at reassuring the American people that all will be
well in the end. I'm thankful for a statesman who, well, acts
statesmanlike. I'm a reluctant fan of the president -- policy issues
aside, of course. But I'm willing to give credit where credit is due.
The man has a feel for capturing the fears and hopes of the American
public. That's why, for me, it's tragic beyond words that Mr. Obama
doesn't seem to realize that we can't achieve security in Afghanistan
even if we beef up our forces there. On the other hand, here is a
president who was bold enough to address head-on the blame-America-first
attitude that prevails in the UN.

Like him or not, whether he is right or
wrong, at least we can be thankful that the president's not cocky.

9:36
AMI am stupefied
as I read Marcus Borg's Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
For instance, on p. 66 he writes:

We do not know if Jesus in fact held a
"last supper" with his disciples at which elements of the meal
(bread and wine) were invested with special significance. The
stories of the last supper in the gospels may be the product of the
early communities' embryonic ritualization of the meal tradition
rather than a historical recollection of the last night of Jesus'
life. There seems, in this instance, no way of moving beyond "not
knowing."

What do you think? Can we move beyond "not
knowing"? Jesus predicted His own resurrection. Did it take place? The
evidence is overwhelming that it did. Read Morison's Who Moved the
Stone? or Anderson's The Evidence for the Resurrection or
Ramsey's The Resurrection of Christ for thoughtful responses to
the scholars' skepticism. We are told by some that true Christianity is
unrecoverable from the extant documents. This charge merits careful
attention. But I have no intention of sacrificing my intellect on the
altar of agnosticism.

9:22
AMQuestion for
you, dear readers. Why do those who talk so long and loud in favor of
servant leadership have so little to say about shared leadership? Why
does one man dominate the pulpit in most of our churches? Why, in fact,
are there pulpits in the first place? The Brethren of yesteryear found
it more conducive for spiritual growth to have simple buildings with no
elevated platforms, no pulpits, and no protestant priests. I know of no
church law that would prevent the eldership from working properly
together and ensuring that every "apt-to-teach" elder has an opportunity
to instruct the congregation. I know that this will go against the
weight of tradition, but just think of the benefits. No longer will your
congregation be known as "Pastor _______'s church." And no longer will
there be the one-man isolated "minister." Why shouldn't we form
leadership teams within our churches that rotate the ministry of
teaching? I know of no other reason than inertia.

Thursday, September 24

9:49
PMDo you
remember the theme from Dragnet? Duh-da-da-duh.
Duh-da-da-duh-duuuuuh!

Well, it seems that I'm going to
be arrested in a few minutes. The charge? Kidnapping. I took Becky out
to our local Chinese restaurant this evening. I escorted her out our
front door, to the car, and all the way to the town of Clarksville.
Right now she is completely free of pain, and her stamina has greatly
improved. I'm super glad. When I asked her what she wanted me to cook
for supper tonight, she said, "Do you think we could go out for dinner?"
Music to my ears. So coppers -- stay away. The kidnappee flew the coop
of her own free will.

Tonight I'm feeling like the Lord has
blessed me so much I don't what to be thankful for. All I can think of
saying is, "Thank you, God." Becky's ambulatory, her pain has subsided,
and she is up and about. But she remains in a high risk period until her
next chemo, so we're trying to be careful with her activities. But on
the whole -- BECKY IS A NEW PERSON TONIGHT. Thank you all again for the
generous outpouring of love and prayers. I am very grateful.

2:55
PMHeard on the
Diane Rehm Show today:

You can only see as far as your own
headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

2:23
PMHad my annual
physical today. Doc says I'm as fit as a fiddle. I decided to get the
flu shot in light of all the illness on campus. I can't afford to get
sick with Becky being so susceptible to viruses.

7:12
AMThe best books
on
Barth. To state the obvious: I'm an avid reader of Barth (usually in
German) because I love his exegesis of specific texts, not because I
always agree with him.

Oh, one more thought. I think I was the
only non-pipe-smoking doctoral student in Basel. It was as if one
couldn't think about the Word without there being smoke (incense
ascending on high?) in the room. Cough, cough....

7:08
AMI am
interested in the response to General McChrystal's advice to the
president. One essay that grabbed my attention came from AlterNet. It's
called
Why President Obama Can't Let Himself Be Blackmailed by His Generals.
It seems clear that the generals are eager to begin striking targets in
Pakistan with more than just drones. But wars are messy businesses, and
we need another invasion and occupation like we need a hole in the head.

7:00
AMIn the past few years
Frank Schaeffer, son of the late apologist Francis Schaeffer, has spent
a great deal of time and effort trying to discredit the religious right,
a movement in which he was raised.

Schaeffer's diagnosis,
however, looks feeble when he says that the answer is to bypass the
"lunatic fringe" and get on with life, as he does in
this interview with Rachel Maddow. Schaeffer spends a great deal of
time talking about the right's ties to fundamentalism and its obsession
with the Last Days – surely an almost perfect illustration of the
genetic fallacy. Incidentally, I happen to be a dispensationalist when
it comes to eschatology, but I am nevertheless united with people like
Frank in their dissatisfaction with traditional applications of this
doctrine. However, evangelicalism cannot be separated from its other
aspect – faith in Jesus Christ as the point of rupture with all other
religions, including the religion of liberalism. This has been made
abundantly clear by Ellul and Eller in their writings about Christian
anarchy. If you wish to dismantle evangelicalism I suppose you
eventually will have to abandon its view of Scripture and its emphasis
upon substitutionary atonement.

Wednesday, September 23

8:57
PMAlmost forgot:
A huge "Kamsahamnida" and "Ευχαριστώ!"to my grader (who is from Korea)
for bringing me sushi and kimchi for lunch today. What a thoughtful
surprise!

8:32
PMAppreciate
Joel and Kimberly for bringing Becky some bananas and peaches. She loves
fresh fruit!

8:25
PMPrayer alert! We may have found a vehicle
for the Galana clinic. Two elders from Soyama are on their way to Addis
to check it out tomorrow. It is similar to the one we purchased for the
church in Alaba several years ago (photo). If it meets our criteria,
then the clinic will have its very own ambulance. Please pray for
brothers Oshe and Daniel, that the Lord will grant them a special
measure of spiritual wisdom in the days ahead.

8:20
PMA thoughtful
reader sent along the words to William Cowper's "Grace and Providence."
This verse hit me squarely between the eyes:

Either his hand
preserves from pain,
Or, if I feel it, heals again;
From Satan's malice shields my breast,
Or overrules it for the best.

Amen and amen!

8:16
PMIn theology
class today we talked about Galatians and the law. Robert Cole did a
fantastic job as our guest lecturer (thanks, Bob!).

How do we keep God's law? The only
solution is to abandon ourselves to His adequacy, submit ourselves to
His program, and trust Him implicitly for enablement. The Spirit of
Almighty God is our only hope, and we must willingly submit to His
agenda, thanking Him ahead of time for His enabling grace. Without
God-enabled obedience we will never penetrate the non-Christian world
with Christ's love. Living a life of scandalous cross-love is a far
better alternative than neurotic Christian activism, which is often
merely an escape mechanism that makes us feel "powerful" when we are
not. Need I add that we are not called to spout off about the Gospel
from a respectful distance and then leave, all the while looking down on
the very people we're ostensibly seeking to win? If we are to serve
Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, we must leave behind our power
ties and bank rolls, otherwise we will remain detached from the unsaved
or lord it over them.

7:55
PMHad a great
supper with Bec. She requested chicken and mashed potatoes, with a side
salad. My cooking actually turned out to be not too bad tonight. Right
now she's asleep. I'm praying she has a good night's rest.

6:45
PMGreetings,
bloggers and bloggerettes! I just got back from campus. Here's what's on
my mind.

First of all, I'm greatly relieved that
Becky is doing better and that her pain is under control. There are, I'm
sure, many factors behind this, not least being the prayers of God's
people and the fact that we are learning to manage her illness through
medicine and diet. This cancer business has been a high learning curve
for us, but as we live day to day we're discovering that the best way to
confront a scientific age is with an ancient book. Let's face it,
illness is always a return to reality about yourself. Plugging in where
God has decided to put us is what it's all about. Unfortunately, it's
often a long, hard road from pain to peace. But there are some road
signs along the way. Here are a few principles I'm beginning to adopt
relative to our fight with cancer:

It's okay to be afraid

The gift of friendship is powerful

The process is costly in both time and
resources

Stay involved in other people's lives

Let others be a source of comfort and
help

Pray hard, believing that God works in
the hearts of needy people

Balance rest with work

Expect unsolicited advice

Follow your own conscience

Keep in step with the Spirit

I don't propose to claim that I'm doing
all of things perfectly. Hardly. But I believe with all my heart that
it's about attitude. The ball is in our court. Do we trust God? Are we
willing to give ourselves over to Him in every department of our lives?
That is the very heart of the Christian life.

As time goes on I'm sure I'll get better
at handling this situation. Becky and I have had too many years together
to doubt the reality of our love for each other or the strength of our
relationship. Do you remember Pilgrim's Progress and how
Christian had strayed off the King's Highway and got himself imprisoned
by Giant Despair in Doubting Castle? He was about to give up all hope of
ever getting out when he remembered that he had on him the key that
would open the lock, the key called "Promise."

This is my advice to us, to you, to anyone
who may be in the dungeon of despair today:

Hold fast to the promises of God!

Gratia et pax,

Dave

Monday, September 21

10:06
PMSo very
thankful for an excellent Greek class tonight and that Becky is doing
well, even though she is barely ambulatory and must use a wheel chair to
navigate around the house. Thankful also that Nate and Jess live on our
farm and are eager to help us. I could not manage the situation without
their assistance. Right now I anticipate going into campus tomorrow, so
if you don't hear from me before Wednesday evening you'll know why. I
still use Front Page and am unable to upload to my website from a
computer other than what I have at home. Please know that Becky and I
love you sincerely and deeply appreciate all of your care and your
prayers.

I could not make it through a single day
without Jesus.

5:50
PMBecky seems to
be doing better. I'm going to go ahead and tutor German and teach Greek
tonight, but I will have the cell phone with me just in case. Man do I
love that woman.

3:20
PMIt just struck
me: A feature that was notably absent from Professor Cox's interview was
mention of the Holy Spirit. He properly called into question our
over-reliance on traditional interpretations of Scripture, our addiction
to unbreakable "rules," our need to be thinking men and women. All fine
and good. But it seems to me that when the New Testament calls on us to
live out our Christian lives, it always emphasizes the indispensable
role of the Spirit of Jesus, who enables us to work out our allegiance
to Christ in the complexities of modern life. This leads me to add that,
in the New Testament ethic, we are not called to obey an external code
but to please a Person. Thank goodness, this emphasis is not lost in our
universities today. I know of many brilliant university students,
followers of Jesus all, who daily depend on the Holy Spirit of God. It
is He who first helps us to want to follow the Lord in obedience, and it
is He who makes that possible. Praise God for this cadre of believing
students!

3:04
PMJust engaged
in one of my favorite avocations -- walking the dogs. We checked the
mail and I admired the contrails at 30,000 feet. Somewhere in the
stratosphere life goes on as usual. Or does it? I wonder how many tales
of woe or intrigue could be told by the passengers now looking down upon
my farm?

1:54
PM"The whole aim
of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence
clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken.

1:12
PM
The Diane Rehm Show today
featured an interview with Harvey Cox, who recently retired from
Harvard. He charges evangelical Christianity with being right-wing,
pro-Republican, and doctrinaristic. There is, of course, some truth to
his charge. I found the interview quite enlightening, especially to hear
his and the listeners' comments about evangelicalism. It is perhaps one
of the greatest ironies of history that the vagaries of
Orthodoxy
should have laid the foundation for the subjective "spiritualism"
espoused by the likes of Professor Cox.

By the way, of the
many examples he used to prove conservatism wrong, I thought the most
interesting was his claim that pederasty (and not homosexuality) is in
view in Paul's list of sins. Mark Goodacre made a similar claim in his
recent online office hours. Most colleagues of mine would argue to the
contrary, correctly so in my view. Still, the points that Cox makes
about the disease of "religion" are well taken. And he is dead on when
he argues that interest in spirituality is on the rise in America.

Is Christ the
radical still the solution? I certainly believe that He is, and indeed
it is my conviction that the Christian faith is the very antithesis of
"religion." Our mollycoddled society, as much as it may claim to long
for spiritual reality, has failed to confront the radical claims of
Jesus, and therein lies our problem.

1:02
PM
A friendly reminder to my Bethel Hill Greek students: The 4-hour rule is
still in effect. If you haven't put in at least 4 hours of study this
past week, you are free to skip class tonight. How's that for
putting it positively?

8:46
AM
There is something bizarre about watching the attacks on Jimmy Carter.
Surround him, throw Lilliputian nets on him, do anything to muzzle
Carter, we cry. The name of the game is character assassination. The
bossy "Republican is good, Democrat is bad" doctrine was cooked up
during the Reagan years. For an illusion, it's remarkably persistent.

7:02
AM
Yesterday I took Becky to the UNC Emergency Room. It took them 6 hours
to get her pain under control. Thankfully she passed a restful night
under heavy sedation.

The fact is, I
can't control what's going on. And that means trusting God and taking
one day at a time. My goal is to be as totally trustworthy to Becky as I
possibly can be. She has a very nasty disease, but her treatment is
proving to be just as nasty. At the same time, there's so much good, God
stuff going on. Just having good medical care is a huge blessing. Being
at the ER yesterday made me realize again how grateful I need to be for
pain medication. When asked to rate her discomfort on a scale of 1 to
10, she replied, "It's a 12." That's exactly how I felt when Becky
brought me to this same ER with my malaria. Job had to grin and bear it.
At least we have morphine.

Paul said, "For
though our bodies are dying, our inner strength in the Lord is growing
every day." What a splendid and responsible approach to the problem of
suffering! The cross reminds us that God is no stranger to pain. Like a
father agonizing over a sick child, He suffers in and with all the
suffering of humanity. And there's another plus. God uses pain to
develop our character. This is precisely what He is doing right now in
my prayer life. I have never prayed harder or more frequently.

Suffering has
reminded me that trusting Christ lies at the heart of the Christian
faith. When Jesus rose triumphantly from that cold tomb, He had me and
Becky in mind. And He remembers us still.

Sunday, September 20

9:32
AM
I must leave for church. Becky insists that I go without her. Jessie
will stay with her. I'm asking everyone who reads this blog to offer a
prayer for her. She feels as if she's been run over by a truck. Indeed
she has. Some say the first week after chemo is the hardest. Others say
the second. I can't imagine it getting any harder than this. May God
show His great mercy toward us. Surely, we are not waiting upon the Lord
in vain.

9:12
AM
I will be presenting the work in Ethiopia by myself this morning. Becky
is simply not strong enough to go anywhere or do anything. I will do my
best in her absence. My message will be this: To follow Jesus is costly.
It will demand involvement and sacrifice. Our trips to Ethiopia are not
vacations. All we can offer, as with Garibaldi and Churchill, is blood,
sweat, and tears.

It is worth
reflecting that many Christians have never arrived at this point of
commitment. For them Christianity is a faith to be admired or else
merely a subject to be studied objectively and historically -- nothing
more. I met many such people during my studies in Basel, Switzerland.
Many of the theology students there had come from the most prestigious
American universities. For them the New Testament was nothing more than
an analyzable datum of linguistic and historical investigation. For all
their audacious ideas, they had no courage to follow the teachings of
the One they claimed to have studied so thoroughly. What is true of
university students is no less true of the modern church-goer. It really
boils down to courage. Do we have the guts to give ourselves to
something as costly as genuine Christianity? For discipleship is often
dangerous. It can mean ostracism and possibly even severe persecution.
It is easier to avoid such risks by sitting in the ranks of the
"scholars" than to have the moral courage to to do anything different
from the crowd.

The Ethiopian
believers rejoice in their sufferings for Christ. Such is the toughness
of their faith. We say, "For me to live is me." They say, "For me to
live is Christ and to die is gain." They say, "Lord, you're sovereign.
Our safety and protection is in you. If you choose to glorify yourself
through our death, praise God -- for me to die is gain. If you choose to
deliver us from death, praise God -- for me to live is Christ." Their
courage, their biblical realism, stands as a scathing condemnation of
anyone who claims to know the historical Jesus yet who refuses to obey
His truth claims. It is much easier, must more comfortable, to simply
run away. Friend, you can run but you cannot hide. The Jesus you so
"objectively" study and teach and write books about will not be mocked.
Whatever escape route from Jesus you choose, it will not work. The God
of truth, the God you are seeking to avoid, will not allow you to live a
lie forever. One day all of our falsehoods will be stripped away, mine
as well as yours, and we will stand naked before this Jesus who will
either be our Savior or our Judge.

And so with Pilate
I ask, "What will you do with Jesus?" Do you know Him or just
know about Him? You will never know Him until you yield, not just your
mind, but your will to Him. I pray that you will do so today.

8:11
AM
"Solutions." It is a human tendency to look for solutions everywhere for
our problems. But all too often the solutions are themselves the
problem.

Every one of us
believes we have the secret of a just society, or the solution to the
health care crisis. At times we even end up wanting to force our
solutions on people -- insisting, for instance, that parents home
educate their children or that their daughters wear only dresses. Of
course, we know better than other parents how to raise their
kids!

Believing that Mr.
Obama has the "solutions" to our problems is one of the main reasons
he's in the White House today instead of his Republican opponent. But I
doubt that society will be any better off because Mr. Obama is
president. The lust after solutions is a fatal disease. Once a president
has the "solution" to a problem it is only a matter of time before the
same problem is reincarnated in another form. Even Christians behave as
if the God whom they claim to know and revere has no solutions outside
of their own dogmas and platforms. The enormous institutional machinery
of our denominations bears eloquent witness to that fact.

It is salutary to
remember that the earliest Christians had no use for manmade "solutions"
or canned programs. The center of their vision for societal renewal was
Jesus Christ. He was the risen Lord. They realized that His kingdom was
not of this world. How wise they were! Far from becoming the new
political zealots of their day, they penetrated society with the
life-changing message that had burned into their souls. That message so
gripped the Barnabases and Phillips and Pauls among them that they were
consumed with passion to spread it far and wide.

Such was the
allegiance to Jesus that they seemed to have. They have shown us the
way.

9:42
PM
I quite agree with
Henry Neufeld that it is sometimes necessary to remove the laurel
wreaths around our heads and replace them with paper bags. Our
convictions on rightness and wrongness are often ridiculously absurd.
Thus, those who urged America to war with moral certitude are now
subject to questions about their own standards of morality. Bye-bye
neo-imperial swagger. Can New Testament scholars act in the same way?
You betcha. Imperial flair is ubiquitous. But Henry makes a good point:

What's even more dangerous is
that once we have made that "concept
idol" we become less and less
capable of hearing the very proper challenges to our idol and the
pedestal on which we have placed it. We hear the challenges to the
idols of others. Egalitarians, such as myself, can quite clearly see
the dangers of patriarchy and hear clearly when its place on the
pedestal is challenged. "Tear down that idol!" we shout!

But have we made our own idols? Too
often we have.

Which is one reason I'm no longer a
cheerleader for home education. Or elder-led congregationalism. Yes, I
hold to these positions, and I espouse them from time to time, sometimes
strongly. But I don't consider it my job to become a fulltime apologist
for anything other than the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Yeshua
ha-Mashiach. If anyone tells you that something trumps Jesus, you can
bet the farm that he or she is self-deceiving and even self-defeating.

7:28
PM
I continue to be grateful for your prayers for my wife. Becky has had a
rough day. Will tomorrow be more of the same? We pray not but leave that
in His hands. I cooked her some Chinese food for supper (her request),
and we are trying to carry on as normally as possible. God willing we
will both be at The Hill tomorrow morning to give an Ethiopia update
during the morning service. We are ready to speak of Jesus wherever and
whenever the Lord might open the door. In the meantime God continues to
bless and encourage us by your loving prayers and emails.

Thank you.

5:20
PM
I see that the next meeting of the Society for New Testament Studies will be in
Berlin,
a city I have never visited. I'll have to give attending some prayerful
thought. I'd really like to see the Marienkirche, the Reichstag (photo),
and the Brandenburg Gate. I already have a piece of The Wall.

4:08
PM
This card came in today's mail:

You were
remembered in prayer by the members of ______ Baptist Church on
Wednesday, Sept. 16. Message:

Becky &
Dave, we lifted your names to our Heavenly Father tonight. We
will continue to pray for you both as you go through this trial!
We love you.

"For this
reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped
praying for you" (Colossians 1:9a, NIV).

Although our trials
this year have perhaps been more than during any previous year, and
although we have often been reduced to weakness and pain, we have lacked
nothing. I am sure it is because of the prayers of God's people. Oh the
beauty of the Body of Christ! Oh how awful not to know the Lord Jesus
personally!

3:40
PM
To jump into the
blogging fray for a moment. I encourage all of my doctoral students
to blog. And several of them do. But I also tell them that the least
important thing they will ever write is their doctoral dissertation, let
alone a blog post of theirs. At best, a dissertation is just the first
publication in what should become a lifetime of scholarship. My blogging
hasn't kept me from writing books, nor should it. Nor do I list my blog
or my web essays on my CV.

Just my two lepta.

2:26
PM
Just watched Mark Goodacre's "office
hours" over at the Duke website. Even T. C. at
New Leaven got a question in! I'm
ashamed to say that I have never met Mark in person even though we teach
at neighboring institutions and he's just pocos minutos away. I
see that my esteemed colleague is just as opinionated as I am about the
issues raised in the discussion. It will also become obvious to any
viewer that Duke is not SEBTS, which is not, of course, a bad thing. At
any rate, well done, Mark. My favorite quote of yours: "I think the most
important thing to do is not just to read the New Testament. New
Testament scholars actually spend far more time reading texts that
aren't in the New Testament, and reading lots of things to get the
historical context right. You have to read widely in ancient
literature...."

1:10
PM
It's happened again! I got yet another email addressing me as "brother."
Not since Captain Binghamton ordered the crew of PT-73 to jump off a
dock have I been so surprised.

12:54
PM
In an earlier post today I mentioned "Durham." I failed to note that the
city I had in mind is the one in North Carolina and not in the UK. I
recall Keith Elliott of Leeds once visiting our ranch in North Carolina.
We drove to the county seat of Oxford to do some shopping, and Keith
bought a postcard for his lovely wife. He thought she would get a big
kick out of it. It said, "Greetings from Oxford." Of course, it looked
nothing like the following:

12:30
PM
NPR's Scott Simon had an
excellent interview today with Byron Dorgan, Democratic Senator from
North Dakota. Sen. Dorgan seems a wily expert in the politics of the
bazaar. Most enjoyable was the tone of civility between Simon and his
interviewee.

I heard the
interview while driving to South Boston ("our fair city") to get Becky
some gauze masks to wear in public. Tomorrow we'll be in a very public
place (at church), and I'm asking those who are fighting colds or who
have come into contact with anyone who is to please consider keeping a
little distance from her. One of the gravest risks Becky faces during
her treatments is that of infection. I know this will be very difficult to do
-- Becky is oh so huggable!

But when it comes to art that has
swayed power brokers instead of voters, the free-market
fundamentalism of Ayn Rand tilts the balance rightward.

The mention of Ayn (think "wine") Rand
conjures up a recent memory. When Becky and I celebrated our anniversary
at the famous Berry Hill plantation (see below), we were reminded that
the property had recently been owned and operated by a brand new school
("Founders College") that promoted the objectivism of one Ayn Rand.

Embarrassingly, the school went belly up
after only a year of operation (12
students originally enrolled, two of them online, and 7 of them had
dropped out by the end of the first semester). At a moment when
Americans were hungry for more government spending and financial
assistance from Big Brother, I guess students were convinced that
free-market fundamentalism was simply a smoky illusion.

I remember all the hooplala when the
college was established, living as I do only about 20 minutes away. The
county fathers thought it would save the local economy. But the college
had trouble attracting faculty, let alone students. One problem:
Teachers were on
short term
contracts, and word had it that renewal depended on student
evaluations. Lousy profs would be gone before they knew it. Personally I
thought this sort of consumerism was a good idea. All too many
"teachers" can do everything but teach. I imagine the administration
thought it could exorcise all the ghosts of the sixties and seventies
and the gross evils of tenure. They turned out to be wrong.

9:17
AM
In a poignant echo of the Sermon on the Hillside, Jonathan
Wilson-Hartgrove, who lives with his family at Rutba House in Durham,
wonders if Christians should have an
alternative investment plan to what the world offers. His manner is
modest, but his ideas are confrontational. At least they are to this
middle-class Christian. It would be awful to arrive at The Seat and be
told I wasted my money on ephemeral things.

9:03
AM
A big "congratulations" to Alan Knox. His
paper on 1 Corinthians has just been accepted by the editors of
Filología
Neotestamentaria. That is a tremendous accomplishment for a doctoral
student. Why not let brother Alan know how pleased you are?

And if you are a doctoral student, why not
send your best work to one of the journals? The worst they can do is say
no.

8:44
AM
Must the TV be ubiquitous? It's in every room in the hospital. It's in
every restaurant. In the Red Robin we visited it's even in the men's
room. I'm not well suited to being a polemicist, but I'm about to get
mal de mer over this TV business.

8:44
AM
Dr. Jim is ahead again,
way ahead. That's good for biblioblogging. Jim is more dazzling,
wise, and witty than his competitors. Here's hoping that some of his
effervescence will rub off on the rest of us mortals.

8:34
AM
Our adventurism in the Middle East continues, without perhaps the noir
and bullying tone of the Bush years. But continue it does. Clinton says
that time is running out for Iran, even as a new report shows that the
country is nuke free. Gordon Prather seems visibly relieved in his essay
Why No Dancing in the Streets? Of course, we reply "Americans can
never back down!" We forget that this is just what Reagan did when he
pulled out of Lebanon. We also forget that he won the Cold War without
firing a shot. I don't mind us championing freedom. But must we do so at
the point of a bayonet?

I hope I can
ask you some questions even though I am only your student through
your text books. The first of these questions concerns the use of
bible software. Do you think that a program like gramcord is worth
the money spent on it for inductive learning, such as when I come
across a bizarre syntactical construction? It would seem that with
gramcord I could look up the same construction in all of its
appearances and discover how it functions in multiple contexts. And
if bible software is worth while, what do you think is the best
choice? I use e-sword just because it is free, but I know that the
majority text it uses is out of date, and it does not have the same
grammar tools as would logos or gramcord.

The other two questions revolve around
learning Greek and doing exegesis the old fashioned way. Do you
think my time would be well spent if I began to read non-Christian
hellenistic documents in Greek? The other is a sort of cheap shot
question because it may be designed on my part to avoid learning two
different methods of exegesis. I've been reading a lot of Ben
Witherington's commentaries lately, and I find that his form of
rhetorical criticism is incredibly helpful, finding the exordium,
narratio, propositio, probatio/refutatio, and peroratio seems to
natural in documents written in a time when such structure was
conventional. Do you think that it can yield exegetical fruit or is
it better to stick with discourse analysis?

P.S. I got a copy of Robertson's
Grammar following the advice in the Epilogue of "It's Still Greek to
Me," that book is huge.

I replied as follows:

Good Morning, ______.
To answer your questions:

1. Tools such
as Gramcord are very useful indeed. They can, however, become
crutches, excuses not to read the text itself. I much prefer to
saturate myself in reading the text so that I might derive my sense
of "Pauline style" (for example) from reading rather than from mere
researching. Does that make any sense?

2. I would strongly encourage you to
begin reading non-biblical Hellenistic writings. And I do believe
that rhetorical analysis can help us to better understand the NT
writings. I have, in fact, employed such methods frequently in my
published articles. Perhaps you would like to see a couple of them?
If so I will send them to you gratis, if you will provide me with
your snail mail address.

Glad you're enjoying Robertson's
Weightlifting 300 textbook!

Cheers!

By the way, I'm told that A. T. Robertson
(photo), author of what we affectionately call the "Big Grammar,"
insisted on teaching at least one section of beginning Greek every
semester at Southern seminary. Imagine being in that class!

8:01
AM
Just received an email from a student that began, "Hey brother Dave!"
That is music to my ears. I know people think I'm crazy, but I do tend
to take Matthew 23 literally. I'm not in the least advocating disrespect
for teachers. I am merely seeking to separate biblical teaching from
long-established custom. The principle is that Christianity knows of no
special titles in Christ's Body. All Christians are equally "ministers."
But we must see ministry not in terms of status but in terms of
activity.

It is very natural
for students to address their professors as "Doctor." Personally I have
little use for the title.

Friday, September 18

8:54
PM
Thankful that Nate, Jess, and Nolan could join us for supper tonight. I
don't deserve such a wonderful family, but I sure do appreciate them.

Becky has gone off
to bed. I'm trusting she will have a restful night and a relaxing day
tomorrow. We are scheduled to speak in our home church on Sunday. That
is always a taxing responsibility, even when one is 100 percent fit
physically. Becky wants to be there. I want her to be there. But the
Lord knows what is best for us.

6:48
PM
Our daughter Liz put together a video for Becky, using pix of our
family, both here and in Ethiopia. You might enjoy watching it. It's
called
He will do great things! Thank you, Liz, for this beautiful labor of
love.

1:55
PM
We just returned home after a successful treatment, thankful for the
superb doctors and nurses God has blessed us with at UNC. Becky went
through the chemo with flying colors. And this morning her blood counts
looked great. It's been a good first step on a long journey. Praise the
Lord!

Both of us are
exhausted, so it's time for a long nap. God bless you for praying for
us.

Thursday, September 17

5:36
AM
Off to UNC Hospital. Bec will have her first chemo today. Hope to be
back home tomorrow. In the meantime, you can check out Becky's latest
essay:
In Pursuit of Health. God bless all of you, and thank you for your
love and prayers.

5:31
AM
Some of the greatest books on the New Testament church are written by an
Anglican named Michael Green. We discussed the first chapter of his book
Freed to Serve in class yesterday. Green mentions 14 ways in which
the church of today and the church of the New Testament only faintly
resemble each other. In our post-evangelical society, I believe they are
worth pondering anew:

1) In the New
Testament, ministry had to be received before it was exercised.

2) In the New
Testament, all Christians were called to ministry, not some.

3) In the New
Testament, ministry was a function, not a status.

4) In the New
Testament, ministry was something corporate and shared.

5) In the New
Testament, authorisation followed ministry rather than preceded it.

6) In New Testament
days, character, not intellect, was the most important condition.

7) In the New
Testament, they selected their leadership from men of experience.

8) In the New
Testament, men were trained on the job as apprentices, not in a college.

9) In the New
Testament, leaders were of two kinds, local and circulating.

10) In New
Testament days, local ministry consisted of people called to serve and
lead in their own locality.

11) In New
Testament days, leaders were normally not paid.

12) In the New
Testament, the leaders saws theirs as an enabling ministry.

13) In the New
Testament, doctrine was important.

14) In the New
Testament, ministry was seen in terms of people, not buildings.

Strong words. We
could not ask for a clearer statement of what is wrong with our churches
today. Why are we so reluctant to take a fresh look at Acts? And why are
we so unwilling to practice what we know to be biblical?

Therein lies the
conundrum.

Wednesday, September 16

6:35
PMQuote of the day
(Allan Bevere):

As
Christians, instead of identifying ourselves as primarily kingdom
citizens, we see ourselves first and foremost as Democrats or
Republicans, conservatives or liberals. The Sermon on the Mount gets
eclipsed by the political platforms of the DNC and the RNC. We like
to say that we transcend such earthly contrived political
conventions, but we can point to very little evidence to show that
this is indeed the case.

Mark Goodacre at
NT Blog has agreed to hold live, online "office hours" this Friday,
Sept. 18, at noon EDT on Duke’s Ustream page:
http://www.ustream.tv/dukeuniversity. Professor Goodacre will be
giving his take on "the New Testament in the news" -- and responding
to questions from anyone who submits them online.

6:25
PMNick Norelli reviews
Don Carson's excellent book
Exegetical Fallacies. Carson is a master at covering a wide range of
subjects and putting them on a shelf that most of us can reach and
benefit from. We are all human and susceptible to committing the sort of
fallacies that Carson exposes.

More not-shockers: conservative
activists are focused like laser beams on abortion and
homosexuality, while progressives are interested in poverty, health
care, the environment, the economy in general, and ending the war in
Iraq. Conservatives love them some individualistic ethics and
free-market economics, progressives want to see structural reform.

In my view,
the real evil of politics is not what do (or fail to do). The real evil
lies in what we are – that is, in our twisted self-centeredness and
hubris. I wrote Christian Archy out of the conviction that Jesus
Christ holds the key to the intractable problem of the proper and
responsible use of freedom. He was the freest man who ever lived, yet no
one served others with greater passion and compassion. I conclude the
book with these words:

This may be the nub of the matter for many of us: our traditional
patterns of religious and political scalp-hunting are the very
things that prevent the Holy Spirit from penetrating the stubborn
patterns of our lives. And the more sincere and humble the activist
is, the firmer is his or her hold on other people – and therefore
the more dangerous. We are so accustomed to the church having its
ethics commissions and public policy boards that we find it
practically impossible to imagine the church without them. It is
well to remember that neither Paul nor any of the other apostles
ever challenged the political status quo. They never saw and never
imagined a church with people rushing on their feet to keep the
political machinery going. The church can overcome this false
allegiance only by returning to the basic doctrine of Christ's
incarnation and his utter devotion to the kingdom of God.

Once again, we can put the point in terms of Christian Archy. The
kingdom of God belongs not to the powerful and religious but to the
poor and childlike humble. The test is simple: How much do you
really serve the world without religious and political machinations?
It is only when we become active in obedience to the Suffering
Servant that the ministry of reconciliation (1 Cor. 5:17) is seen in
its true meaning and has its full freedom of operation.

The Christian movement
only began to catch on when Jesus was crucified. His cross became the
symbol of the new movement. The symbol of death became a badge of honor.
The same thing can happen today.

6:12
PMThe BBC reports on
Baptist battles in River Jordan. I know I'm laying my head on the
block for saying it, but is there anything more ridiculous than
followers of Jesus waiting to be baptized until they can afford a trip
to the Holy Land? Baptism is a hugely important thing and, if I recall,
it was Jesus' first command to His followers. Surely it is very strange
that anyone should think that baptism could become a fashion statement –
"Look at me! I was baptized where Jesus was baptized!" Needless
to say, in New Testament times you got wet as soon as possible. Baptism
was, if you will, a public "pledge of allegiance" to Jesus Christ. It
marked the beginning of your discipleship pilgrimage. And the order is
clear: first baptism, then instruction ("baptizing…teaching," Matt.
28:19). Many complain that western Christianity has become nothing more
than a cultural fad. I think this charge has a great deal of substance
behind it.

6:02
PMRecently one of our
evangelists in Ethiopia received a severe beating from the opponents of
Jesus. My mind went to a statement of Brother Yun (Back to Jerusalem,
p. 69) as he commented on the persecution in China:

Don't pray for the persecution to stop! We shouldn't pray for a
lighter load to carry, but a stronger back to endure! Then the world
will see that God is with us, empowering us to live in a way that
reflects his love and power.

I believe it was Vance
Havner who once said: "We do not have to live. We have only to be
faithful." Think of Stephen kneeling before his persecutors with
cheerful countenance, or of Peter sleeping soundly between his guards
the night before his execution. As always, the blood of the martyrs is
seed.

Tuesday, September 15

6:33
AM
Becky bought several wigs yesterday. I haven't seen them yet but I'm
sure they're beautiful. After all, they have the imprimatur of Jessie
and Liz.

6:27
AM
Below are some pix of yesterday's haying. They will probably bore you
silly. People either like farming or they don't. When you come down to
it, farming is just plain hard work. How can anyone say otherwise? But
to those who love farming, there's nothing like it.

As I go back over
my life, carefully reading it in the light of the Bible, I see that my
faith in God has never disappointed me. He has led me as One in whom I
can place my total trust. And it is He who placed me here at Rosewood.
Of course, He has a huge sense of humor. Only God would have placed
me on a farm -- the ultimate beach bum, raised in laid-back Hawaii
with nary a farm animal or blade of hay. Farming is like a meta-language
to me. I understand it quite well though sometimes it sounds like
rambling -- "bush hog," for example, or "baler twine." What an odd
reversal: Greek prof mucks manure. Perhaps scholars know better than
most people that reality is a fragile, provisional thing.

Despite our
restlessness, however, God builds us a world that makes sense, with
meanings, limitations, imperatives -- all of these congruent with
reality. So I do not take my reality lightly. I'm aware of the
limitations of farming, the tremendous ebb and flow of crop values, the
illusory promise of happiness. Amid all the limitations of my chosen
lifestyle I have come to a realization: I am a pilgrim and exile on this
earth, eager to pick up stakes and abandon everything. I enjoy my farm
but I don't worship it. I must, however, be a wise steward of what is
entrusted to me, until that day when I enter my true Home, with which
nothing on this earth can compare.

But enough
philosophizing. Here are the photos. I raked while Nate baled. We sold
most of the hay in the field (customers came and picked up their own
bales). A couple of trailer loads ended up in our barns to be sold this
winter.

Monday, September 14

10:16
AM
Had a discussion recently with a student about patriarchy. I shared with
him my concern that sometimes even biblically correct positions can be
reduced to a dogmatic narrowness, formalism, and fundamentalism. And
this of necessity leads to a kind of fascism. Sadly many Christians
gravitate to such black-and-white thinking, glad to find someone who can
tell them what to do, someone who will "protect" them from society.
Patriarchy-ism is becoming a beacon of authority precisely because it
speaks to our insecurities in a time of incoherence. But is that not a
danger of any of our "movements," including agrarianism? This, at least,
is what I argue in my forthcoming
Christian
Archy.

9:56
AM
Family news: Becky begins chemo this Thursday at UNC. It will be an
overnight stay. Right now she and her daughters Liz and Jess have gone
wig shopping down in Durham. I asked her to get me one while she's at
it.

In the meantime
Matt is helping the boys with their homework. Micah's working on
spelling his name; Caleb and Isaac are sloshing through addition.

Nolan loves his
Papa B, and Papa B loves Nolan!

8:57
AM
This morning I deleted from my Favorites perhaps the leading libertarian
website on the Internet. The libertarian position is a dismal platitude
without a single hope. I must break off and leave it behind so that I
can hear the strange Word of God. It is my view that faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ is absolutely essential. This implies that it is not enough
to invoke the name of Christ when defending one's anti-imperialistic or
anti-war views and fail to invoke his name as Savior and Lord.
Everything in libertarianism is directed to the rights of free citizens.
But America is not my commonwealth. I am a citizen of heaven, and its
King must receive the preeminence He is due.

1) The church at
Philippi deeply cared about Paul. They had inquired about his health and
prospects (1:26). They had also been anxious about the condition of
Epaphroditus (2:25-30). A missionary church is a caring church.

2) Paul shows how
his circumstances had resulted in the advancement of the Gospel. His
imprisonment had given him access to high government officials to whom
he had become a friend and counselor. It had also emboldened timid Roman
Christians. A missionary church puts the Gospel above every
convenience and comfort and does not neglect to befriend public figures.

3) For Paul, living
meant Christ and dying meant gain because he simply got more of Christ.
A missionary church is at peace whether or not its members continue
in life or are taken in death.

4) Certain ones in
Rome had preached Christ because of their envy of Paul and through
motives of crass partisanship. Paul says, "If Christ is being
proclaimed, I am happy!" A missionary church rejoices that in every
way, in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.

Paul's Lord was the
original revolutionary. Following Him involves a complete reorientation
of life. We are called to be upsetters, people who turn the world upside
down for Christ. To love Christ, to share Christ, to die for Christ if
necessary -- that is our only purpose in life, as it was Paul's.

7:48
AM
"Nate's got a bad case of hay fever." Thus spoke Jessie yesterday. She
meant "Nate's got haying fever." It's an incurable disease around
here. Haying is some of the hardest yet most enjoyable work we do on the
farm. Much of today will be spent in raking and baling. Can't wait for
the festivities to begin. But the heavy dew has to dry first.

6:55
AM
It is a pleasant feature of the modern world that I can send an email to
Ethiopia and receive a reply the same day, provided the electricity is
working. Our ministry has been hampered this past year by the lack of
hydro-electric power in the country. Things seem to be better in the
north (Gondar) than in the south (Burji). There is no reason to believe
that the situation will improve much in the near future. Still, we are
spoiled in comparison to our forefathers' generation of missionaries who
had to rely upon snail mail and communications that often took months to
be completed.

6:43
AM
David Gushee says we should
get out of Afghanistan. I believe his essay merits attention and
self-examination. Even if might is the only thing that can destroy
al-Qaeda, its support base can be eroded by pursuing policies that Arabs
and Muslims see as unjust. I am glad to see a leading Baptist theologian
and ethicist enter the moral arena in a serious way, going beyond
truisms and recognizing the obligation that accrue to us as Christians.
Meanwhile the U.S. is like the proverbial dinosaur in the tar pit, while
fear and distrust of America increases globally.

Sunday, September 13

7:28
PM
The doggies said, "Let's go for a walk, Daddy," so off we went. A
perfect idea on such a perfect evening!

6:32
PM
David May is a man after my own heart: a professor of New Testament
and a missionary to Myanmar. Check out his excellent blog
here.

6:10
PM
Becky and I had the privilege today of being with the brethren at
Cresset Baptist in Durham. Let me start by thanking everyone involved in
making our visit a reality, including Jon and Matthea Glass. What a joy
to work side-by-side with you in the Gospel. Thank you so much for the
sacrifice and investment you've already made in the church in Africa.

Cresset, your
pastor rocks. I love that man. And Matthea -- you are just as much a
fulltime missionary as Jon is. And what can I say about those who turned
out for our meeting after church?

Nine of you signed
up to commit our 2010 trip to prayer. To be honest, I'm excited about
the future of the work in Ethiopia. Our meeting today has me pumped up
for our gathering in two Sundays at Messiah Baptist in the Forest of
Wake. I can't wait for Ethiopia 2010 to begin! My prayer is that God's
Spirit moves in hearts in such a way that we will never be the same as a
result of our partnership in the Gospel.

Meanwhile, if
you're new to DBO, I invite you to check out our
Ethiopia
Files. Surf around a bit -- or actually a lot. God is doing some big
things in the Horn of Africa through little people like Becky and me and
our other team members. It's amazing what God can do through weak but
yielded vessels. On Sundays there's so much to distract us, including
football. Let's get distracted by the resurrection of Jesus Christ and
His love for the nations!

7:52
AM
Happy Grandparents Day to Becky and me!!

7:17
AM
There's a new book out on "Ephesians,"
I see. I'd love to read it but I can't afford it. At any rate, I put
"Ephesians" in quotes because the majority of New Testament scholars
have concluded that the book was an encyclical epistle. That is, it was
not first sent to the Ephesians but to a group of churches in Asia
Minor. I disagree with this prevalent view. If you're curious as to my
reasons, they may be found in an essay called
The Peculiarities of Ephesians and the Ephesian Address (.pdf). And
yes, I defend the originality of the words en Epheso in 1:1, even
though the "earliest and best" manuscripts omit them.

7:17
AM
I love my pastors. I'll miss them today because I will be at another
gathering. They are laymen before they are "ministers." They remain
laymen while they are ministering. Their job is not to do something for
me but to help me do something for myself. The ministry of the Word is
not the right to speak exclusively for God but the duty of seeing that
the Word has free reign among the people.

Leader, do you
recognize that your primary calling today at church is as a member of
the Body?

6:59
AM
Well, Nate cut yesterday, so it looks we'll be picking up hay Monday or
Tuesday. Chris, Woody, Lendon -- you guys up to it?

6:56
AM
Right now I'm reading through the book of Acts in preparation for
Wednesday's theology class. I believe Acts 2 contains incipient but
permanent principles of organization and life for the church. The church
is not yet fully organized, but what we do see is a fully functioning
corporate Christian community. And what a community it is! It operated
under the control of the Holy Spirit, and the doctrine of the kingdom
was central in its teaching. What is striking is that the early church
was always in action. The work of the kingdom was beginning. One
manifestation of their new life is seen in their frequent celebration of
the Lord's Meal to commemorate His death and soon return. Common meals
were served in their homes, and many outsiders were irresistibly drawn
to the new Christian community. Liberality and fraternity were
everywhere. The church was a new society, a new humanity, not an
evolution.

O how I love this
church! How I look forward to talking about it in class. May we learn to
forget our unhappy partisan divisions and miserable jealousies. May the
Holy Spirit stamp His love on the hearts, personalities, emotional
natures, intellects, wills, and entire conduct of God's people.

Evangelicals, we
can do together what we cannot do apart, and I for one am willing to
work with you in extending Jesus' loving rule into a broken world.

9:38
PM
Almost forgot. Ed was kind enough to read a draft of
Christian
Archy and found several typos I had missed. Thank you brother. My
word, I hate typos!

9:02
PM
Just spent a hugely enjoyable evening with Ed, Dolores, and Leanna
Johnson. Ed has been to Ethiopia 3 times with us. Dolores and Leanna
cooked the most delicious lasagna and Becky provided the freshly baked
bread and salad. She also set a very lovely table.

Thanks for the
visit, Johnsons. You mean a lot to us and to the kingdom. We love you
guys!

1:06
PM
A seminary in Sri Lanka is seeking a visiting professor of hermeneutics
or synoptics. Go
here for more information.

While you're at the TSE site, you might
try out their
Bibelquiz. You can even tell them how difficult you want it to be!

12:30
PM
Just finished mowing the yard in perfect 75 degree weather. Reminded me
of Hawaii, where the air temp and the water temp both averaged about 75.
Fabulous.

11:02
AM
As the economy continues to sour, there's an upside for missionary
organizations, as this report from Christianity Today shows:
The
Not-for-Profit Surge. One example:

In January, ecfa member organization
Prison Fellowship laid off 40 people as part of a 12 percent budget
reduction. While no more large staff cuts are anticipated, president
Mark Earley says he expects another expenditures decrease in the
next fiscal year. In an "urgent prayer and budget request" e-mail
appeal in March, Earley told partners that the nonprofit faced a
$2.8 million deficit in donations. "We know that if we do not make
up this shortfall," Earley wrote, "we will be forced to make even
more cuts."

"The positive in this is that
it's causing us to be more focused on our
mission in a very clear way, and to invest our resources more
pointedly in the core aspects of that mission," Earley told
CT.

Here's another:

Another organization that's retooling
is Greater Europe Mission (GEM), headquartered in Monument,
Colorado. Chief executive Henry Deneen says that in February 2009,
GEM reduced its budget and cut personnel as part of a strategy
shift. The new approach involves more direct
contact with congregations through personal visits.

Ah, missions both streamlining and
returning to the local church -- music to my ears!

Basically, I am firmly committed to
age-integration but don't think that every single ministry of the
church has to be completely age-integrated. I do not think my views
are the only option, though I am passionate about them for what I
believe to be good, Biblical reasons.

9:30
AM
Looking forward to being at
Cresset Baptist Church in Durham tomorrow. We'll give an update on
Ethiopia. After the service we'll be meeting with anyone from Cresset
who is interested in going with us on our next trip. We intend never to
enlarge the field of laborers without much prayer and seeking of God's
wisdom.

9:22
AM
The Body of Christ exists for one purpose -- to do what Christ did with
His body. He gave it for the world.

7:46
AM
Almost everywhere I go someone says, "Because of 9/11 we had to invade
Iraq." I disagree. Under our former president we pursued a policy that
killed or maimed thousands, created millions of refugees, and
destabilized a volatile region. Ultimately I am convinced that the Iraq
War will go down as the greatest foreign policy disaster in American
history. What right does the U. S. Constitution give us to "change the
world"? America is not a redeemer nation. That Americans are God's
Chosen People is a myth, and I will have no part in our millennial
mission to democratize the world. Christ's message is not a call to arms
but a call to care, and I would gladly give my life to share the Gospel
with bin Laden or any other Muslim for that matter. I do not believe in
America. I believe in another kingdom, one led by a King who said, "If
you pick up the sword, you will die by the sword." In an age of
omnipresent war, I pray that Christians will have enough courage to love
our enemies.

A poor frightened
world trembles from one bomb attack to another. But there is a balm in
Gilead and there is a Physician available. And the way for men and women
to avoid God's judgment is to hide in the forgiveness of a Savior who
sat around a table with a Zealot revolutionary and a Roman tax collector
and loved them both.

7:34
AM
Yesterday I took Becky to the Berry Hill Plantation in Halifax County
for a Swedish massage and prime rib dinner. I think she was completely
surprised. It was a very pleasant evening for us. We walked down memory
lane and reflected on the Lord's goodness to us.

The plantation home
is one of the few Greek revival houses still standing in the area. The
original plantation comprised over 100,000 acres.

The portico
reminded me a lot of Robert and Mary Lee's home, Arlington House, except
that these columns are fluted.

We dined in the
intimate setting of the Carrington Restaurant overlooking the vast
expanse of the plantation. Both the food and the service were
outstanding.

This horseshoe
stairway is very rare, even in ante-bellum homes.

I enjoyed playing
this 1844 piano. I'm afraid it was probably last tuned in that year too.

Afterwards we came
home and watched some Wagon Train, filled with happy thoughts about the
miracle of marriage. I still can't get over the fact that Bec has put up
with a dunderhead like me for all these years. We treasure each and
every day the Lord Jesus gives us to serve Him together.

7:12
AM
The weather outlook looks great for the next few days. To
cut or not to cut hay? That is the question.

Friday, September 11

2:06
PM
Thankful today that "God's riches in glory" are not affected by who is
in the White House or by a fall in share prices.

10:26
AM
Had the joy of helping Nathan with a load of organically grown hay
today.

These bales will
feed goats in Timberlake, NC.

10:12
AM
Here's a word I love: unity. We've spoken about it a lot in our classes
this semester, as well we ought to. This word has not always been
important to me. But my own experience and involvement with believers
across the globe have led me to a deep conviction that followers of
Jesus can and must work together for the Gospel.

In Ethiopia Becky
and I work with a broad variety of churches. The spectrum of
denominations is amazing: Pentecostals and Lutherans, Baptists and
Mennonites. The need of Ethiopia drives us together. The realization
that only 18 percent of Ethiopians are born again believers presses us
to pray. We need Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit. We need wisdom and
faith, healing and hope. And we need each other. The words "fellowship
of the Holy Spirit" (2 Cor. 13:13) have a fresh impact.

In Acts 2,
Pentecost began when the disciples had come together in one heart and
mind. The power of Pentecost is still available today. Pray with me that
God would unite us around the Good News so that the kingdom of God may
be advanced exponentially. Surely this is more important than defending
our view of the ordo salutis or trying to become the number one
biblioblogger on the web.

Holy Father,

As I look around
me I see division at every hand. Your first and overriding command to us
is that we love one another. You have told us to go out into the world
-- not in the context of dissension within the ranks of those who go.

Lord, I'm tired
of facts and statistics, charts and graphs, debates about Bible
translations. Teach me that unity means submission, sometimes swallowing
my opinions. I desire -- through prayer, in cooperation, with tears if
necessary -- to work with other believers for the sake of the Gospel.

Teach your church
that we are truly members of each other. Help us to break down the
barriers of pain and, by your grace, fight our way to each other.

I pray this in
the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Below: Some of the
elders of the Alaba church and the Burji church. Becky and I work
exclusively through the local churches in Ethiopia and with their
leaders. Our goal is to connect congregations in America with
congregations in Ethiopia, since the locus of ministry in the New
Testament is the local church.

I've got a few
surprises planned for her today. You know, a bit of pampering. In the
meantime:

I LOVE YOU!

7:30
AM
All of you who read this blog regularly know that I have an incurable
addition to World War II escape stories. I'm not sure why, except
perhaps because I respect the heroism and sacrifice of those allied
airmen whose ordeal in captivity often make my own problems look like
flea bites. While Hitler had his head in the clouds at the Berghof,
these men -- many of them at least -- were plotting escape. I am
especially interested in reading about their character -- did they see
themselves as victims of circumstances, as men who had "given up," as
fated to live and die in a faraway place?

Last night I was
reading my latest foray into the art and science of escape,
The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied Prisoners of War in Europe
1944-1945. The authors were discussing "Dixie" Dean, who was in
charge of the prisoners at Stalag Luft VI. What made him such a good
leader? they wanted to know. How was he able to maintain control over a
group of prisoners that could be undisciplined to the point of anarchy?

The authors pointed
out an interesting irony: an officer who was good at leading fighting
men into battle was often unsuitable for leadership in a prisoner-of-war
camp. A successful camp leader had to

inspire
confidence by showing that he was completely unselfish about food
and personal comfort. He had to ensure that everyone in the camp
always received a fair share of everything, taking a firm line with
those, of no matter what rank, who tried to get more than their
share. He had to be indefatigable in negotiating with the enemy to
improve conditions and to protect inmates from ill-treatment. He had
to bear hunger, cold and other discomforts cheerfully, and by his
example maintain the morale of his fellow prisoners.

When I read this
description on the ideal camp leader I thought immediately of Heb. 13:7,
where leaders are mentioned not so much for their titles or authority as
for their faith and selfless conduct. Believers are to carefully observe
their Christianity and follow their example. Such leaders will certainly
"inspire confidence" because of their unselfishness. They will be keen
to ensure that their followers are given fair treatment and are
protected from injustices. They will gladly bear discomforts and will
show no partiality.

I am glad to say
that the spiritual leaders in my church are men who inspire such
confidence by their Christ-likeness. Titles mean nothing to them (e.g.,
"Senior Pastor"). They lead by feeding the flock a healthy diet, by
building consensus ("it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us"), by
working hard and going out in front with courage and admonishing us to
follow Jesus with all of our being (see 1 Thess. 5:12-13). It is a joy
to follow their example and their leadership, an honor to be associated
with them, a pleasure to "esteem them very highly in love for their
work's sake."

7:15
AM
Publishers Weekly interviews
Graham Salisbury, author of the recently released children's book,
Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet, a story set on Kailua beach in
Hawaii. Graham grew up in Kailua (as I did) and attended Kailua
Elementary School (as I did). In fact, Coconut is Graham -- and
maybe a little bit of me as well.

Not only does Paul
give instructions on labor through his words. His own life served as
an example to the Thessalonian church as to what it meant to work
hard. His example still stands for readers today. To get a full
appreciation for this fact, one ought to survey all of Paul’s
epistles as well as the book of Acts to see just how disciplined
Paul was willing to be for the sake of the Gospel. Yet even in this
passage, Paul gives a quick statement that is to the point about his
example—he worked night and day so as not to be a burden on anyone
else. The implication here is being a financial burden as he reminds
the Thessalonians that he and his associates did not eat anyone’s
food without paying for it.

Thursday, September 10

7:45
PM
Nolan just gets more and more photogenic. Need proof? We love you, Nolie
Polie!

7:40
PM
Is there anything more ingenious or more functional than a spider web,
like this one I found in our woodshed today? Amazing. Reminds me of the
beauty of language.

7:33
PM
Thankful for Becky, who made the most delicious Chicken Alfredo for
supper tonight, along with home grown green beans and a fruit compote.
Wow.

6:54
PM
To all of our friends and family in Ethiopia:
Happy New Year!
Becky and I celebrate with you.

4:06
PM
I'm a firm believer in English Bible translations. But if you want to
make Bible study come alive, try paraphrasing the passage you're
studying in your own words. Rewriting the text, after carefully studying
it, will stimulate your thinking and clarify your teaching points. For
example, earlier today I referenced Paul's visit to Athens. In Acts
17:16 we read that when Paul saw the idolatry in the city "his
spirit was provoked within him" (NASB). Compare that with
Phillip's rendering: "his soul was exasperated."
Now try rewriting Paul's statement in your own words. Then compare your
rendering with various translations and paraphrases. The following will
help you:

NIV: he was
greatly distressed

NLT: he was
deeply troubled

HCSB: his spirit
was troubled within him

NET: his spirit
was greatly upset

ISV: his spirit
was tried to its depths

The idea is to
think about what you're reading and not merely parrot whatever
translation you happen to be accustomed to. I've learned that when I
paraphrase a passage of Scripture (having studied it first in the Greek)
I am better able to see how every word contributes to its meaning.
That's why I've produced my own paraphrases of the books of Philippians
and 1 Thessalonians -- the two letters I use most often when teaching
Greek syntax to my students. I tell you, producing your own paraphrase
of the text will put your mind in gear like nothing else will.

P.S. Many modern
commentaries on the New Testament are now requiring their authors to
provide their own rendering of the Greek. That's encouraging. Again,
it's a lot of work, but the results, I think, are well worth the effort.

1:06
PM
Once again, Henry Neufeld had wielded his analytical knife with
excellent effect:
Living Romans 12. Well said, Henry.

11:58
AM
Credit where credit is due. Becky and I went to the DMV in South Boston
today to get her "chariot of fire" registered. The service was both
pleasant and efficient. No waiting in line either. A tip of my kepi to
the fine people who work there.

P.S. We splurged
and got Bec a personalized license plate. It reads:

ITIZWEL

10:12
AM
Nate and I spread manure this morning in the rain. Got soaked. Got
filthy dirty. And loved every minute of it.

7:38
AM
Do you have the "Athens Perspective"? Here's what I mean. When I first
visited Greece in 1981, I couldn't wait to see the archeological
treasures of its great capital. The Areopagus, the Acropolis, the
Parthenon -- I felt like I had gone to heaven so enraptured was I with
all these wonderful sites. But when Paul and his adventurous missionary
company visited the city on his second missionary journey, all he saw
were spiritual needs. Paul would never have considered himself a
"radical," yet he was one of the most radical men who ever lived.
"Radical," of course, means going to the root, and Paul plunged through
all the layers of history, philosophy, and architecture to the root of
mankind's need.

Yesterday Alvin
Reid told the story of how he and his son once toured the great cities
of Europe. He set as his personal goal to share the love of Jesus with
at least one person every day on the trip. I can just see Alvin talking
about Jesus in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, striking up a
conversation and then moving beyond the distracting loyalties to the
core of man's emptiness.

There is a radical
reformation taking place in our day. Many of us are a part of it. We are
tired of debating the virtues of the NIV over the ESV (or vice versa).
We are tired of You Tubes criticizing a certain pastor because of the
way he pronounces "logos." It's time to get back to the essentials, to
dare to put the Gospel first and to allow the Lordship of Christ to
unsettle our morose self-centeredness.

What happened to
Paul in Athens is happening in my own heart. God is beginning to remove
any interest in my heart to see the "great sights" of this world. I want
to look at the world as God sees it and evaluate everything in life from
an eternal perspective. I'm thankful to be part of a missional
revolution -- a reordering of priorities in the Body of Christ, a
rethinking of presuppositions, a recommitment to conserve the essence of
life as Jesus taught us to live it.

The Athens
Perspective: You either have it or you don't. We are to be the
essentialists of our day. In fact, if all we see when we visit Athens
are great buildings, there's something dreadfully wrong.

6:53
AM
I recall how one year, when we still lived in California, Becky and I
dined at
Sir Winston's Restaurant aboard the Queen Mary, which is permanently
docked in Long Beach Harbor. It's sad to contemplate such a great ocean
liner in moth balls, good for little more than weddings and parties. The
book of Acts, which will be the focus of next week's theology class, is
the story of a church on the go. The same quality of church can
be born in Nelson, Virginia, and in your town or city. The mark of a
"moving" church is that it exists for others. Vitality, vibrancy,
urgency, and involvement complement each other. Both our beliefs and our
style of life testify to the life-changing power of Jesus. The church in
America needs to rediscover the power of the Gospel. Unless the quality
of our lives is a contrast to the dull drabness of the world, our
churches deserve to be docked forever like the Queen Mary.

Wednesday, September 9

7:52
PM
Today in our New Testament Theology class Alvin Reid spoke on evangelism
as he superbly guided us through the first two chapters of 1
Thessalonians. I invited Alvin to lecture because I know of few men who
are more committed to firing up the current generation of students to
become powerful prayer warriors and passionate lovers of the lost.

How Paul cared for
those saints in Thessalonica! I can only imagine the joy in his heart as
he wrote to his converts. Paul wanted them to lead a movement that would
destroy the superstitions, cults, and materialism of Thessalonica
through Jesus' scandalous love. That can happen to all of us for our
city, our family, our place of work -- if we are willing to put the
Gospel first. Taking Paul's missionary work among the Thessalonians as
an example, Alvin listed 7 bullet points that should characterize our
evangelistic efforts today:

Evangelism must
be centered on the Gospel.

Evangelism must
be proclaimed in word.

Evangelism
depends on the power of God.

Everything must
be done with the Holy Spirit and with conviction.

We must embrace
the idea of becoming missional.

Our witness
must grow out of our character.

This kind of
evangelism becomes viral; it spreads like a good disease.

Here are some of
the great quotes I jotted down as Alvin spoke:

"The early
church was not about digging holes to build buildings."

"Go to the
nations unless God stops you. Then go to the cities. But always go
where God leads you."

"Paul was
Gospel-centered."

"It's amazing
how often joy and suffering come together in the Holy Spirit."

"It will take
conviction to serve God in our culture."

"Paul never
spells out a 1-2-3, how-to-do-it evangelism."

"We do more
than proclaim the Gospel with words. We share our own lives."

I want to express
my profound appreciation to Alvin, a beloved colleague, who has been
unceasing in his faithful encouragement of me and my work at SEBTS. His
life and example have deepened the sound of the drum beat of the Holy
Spirit in my own experience. I truly believe a new day has dawned in
Southern Baptist life. The early believers in the book of Acts knew they
were called, appointed, and set apart to the work of the Gospel. And so
are we!

6:56
PM
Did I mention that Becky served up guacamole with supper? Does anything
taste better than guacamole? Guacamole will be in heaven. Trust me.

6:25
PM
Right now Becky's in the kitchen cooking enchiladas. My mouth is
drooling all over the keyboard.

A
pizzeria in Eilat, Israel, offers plain pizza and "pizza with
fungus," according to the large English menu at the restaurant.

That brings
back memories. In 1978 Bec and I were in Schönberger Strand in northern
Germany when we ordered (in German, naturally) a "pepperoni" pizza.
Eventually the waiter brought us a pizza alright – covered with red
peppers!

There are
many such "false friends" (faux ami) in language – another
classic example being the word "Gift" in German, which originally meant
"gift" but (through a process called pejoration) came to mean "poison."

Languages –
what fun!

5:53
PM(Warning: I'm about to vent.)

Today I went
over to Belief Net to read what Scot McKnight had to say about
Bible translations and was so assaulted by flash ads and pop-ups
that I will never visit that site again. Niemals! Too bad Scot gave up
his fantastic Jesus Creed blog site.

5:45
PMLet's not be afraid of change. That's the thought that
came to my mind as I listened to a report on NPR yesterday. Seems the
Samoans will have to drive on the left side of the road from now on – in
imitation of their neighbors in Australia and New Zealand. The good
citizens of Samoa were given a day off to practice, and all the bars in
the country were closed for three days!

Change is a
healthy, normal process. But a process it is. And occasionally
it's downright messy. In the church, maturity is a similar process. As
we absorb biblical truth, the indwelling Holy Spirit begins to allow
that truth to pervade our thinking in such a way that we start to change
our behavior in ways that sometimes surprise us. Ten years ago neither
Becky nor I were very involved personally in missions. Now we
can't wait to get to Ethiopia twice a year. Neither of us gave our TV
habits much thought. Today we watch no television, and we don't miss it
a bit. Ten years ago we had no idea we'd be farming fulltime in southern
Virginia. The truth is, life is full of changes. Right now Becky and I
are changing our eating habits. We know we can eat healthier and that
good nutrition can help Becky with her illness. No, we do not believe in
a "miracle" diet. Neither do we believe what one author has said: "It is
your birthright to live healthy, right up until the day you die!"
Nonsense! Let's see, one minute you're healthy, and the next you're
dead? Still, it makes good sense for us to eat proper foods and to get
the best nutrition out of what we do put into our mouths. And that's how
we must operate in the Body of Christ. As we ingest the solid meat of
the Word of God, we begin to realize that we can never settle into a
smug and comfortable acceptance of low living. Perfection is our goal
(Phil. 3:16), and we move on toward it. Amen?

Whether
it is the Archeology Bible, Patriot Bible, a Celebrity Bible or the
Poverty and Justice Bible, when Scripture is used in a manner that
sees it subservient to the pragmatic agenda we have misused
Scripture and have become unfaithful to its claim to be God's Word
and in doing so we have claimed it as our own word to say what we
wish to promote.

I recall discussing
this very verse when the ISV Committee on Translation met. We considered
three possible renderings: "For whom are you looking?" "Whom are you
looking for?" And "Who are you looking for?" We all felt that the latter
was the most natural rendering of the Greek, even though it broke two
so-called "rules" of English grammar. We tried (and often failed to
succeed, I'm sure) in the ISV to balance naturalness and referential
accuracy. Incidentally, Wayne Leman has a great discussion of
Naturalness in English Bible Versions using 23 examples. And while
we're on the subject, I loved reading the comments of Loren Bliese in
this interview about his translation work in Ethiopia.

5:23
PM
Over at Jack of All Trades, Bitsy Griffin reviews Max Lucado's
Fearless. Of all the quotes in her review, this one stood out to me
(for obvious reasons):

Real
courage embraces the twin realities of current difficulty and
ultimate triumph.

Despite the challenges
Becky and I face with her illness, the good news is that we can know
Jesus better every day, we can experience increasingly the power of His
resurrection, we can enter more and more into the fellowship of His
sufferings, we can keep on going, though never arriving in this life.

I'm glad I stumbled
upon Bitsy's review and this Lucado quote. God is so good to me.

5:18
PM
All this
week I'm working on reviewing my French. I'm reading a great book called
Messages pour notre temps by Alfred Kuen. It's essentially a
commentary on the General Epistles. I'm also listening to mp3s of De
Gaulle, Sarkozy, and others at
this site.

10:25
PM
While I was teaching Greek this evening Becky was interviewing three
very precious saints at Bethel Hill. You can look for her interviews on
the BHBC blog
in the very near future. In class there was an air of great excitement
as we began to translate directly from the Greek New Testament for the
very first time. No more of my silly "See Jane. See Jane run" sentences.
This was a historic evening in Greek for another reason too. For the
first time in human history (to my knowledge) someone tweeted during
Greek class. The recalcitrant reprobate shall go unnamed, but he blogs
here.

Off to bed, then
early to rise. I've got classes for the next two days.

2:22
PM
Just came indoors to make lunch and get some writing done. The good news
is that the fence is finished. Here's Nathan hard at work. I have a
saying: "I love work. I can watch it all day." Especially when it's my
son doing the work.

Alas, Nate is not
just a builder; he is a master craftsman, an artisan of the old school.
Need proof?

Did I tell you we
also needed to spread manure today? O the joys of farm life. Again, Nate
is our featured star. I give him a perfect 10 for form.

Not that I only
watch and take pictures, mind you. I am quite the trash can empty-er.

Oh, we picked up a
hitchhiker on the way back to Bradford Hall. Hope she can find her way
home.

And here's the
final product. Not bad for a couple of hillbillies, eh? The doggies are
already enjoying their new and improved run.

You may not be
impressed, but Nolan is speechless.

Well, the rain just
started. Isn't the Lord's timing perfect?

10:51
AM
Enjoying a quick break from fencing. The weather is ideal for working
outdoors: right now it's a comfortable 69 degrees. Bec and Jess have
gone off to Sam's Club and Whole Foods. We're planning on some pretty
significant dietary improvements around here.

7:50
AM
Speaking of work, my schedule for today includes working on the fence,
spreading manure, making a trash run, tutoring German, teaching Greek,
and prepping for my seminary classes. Did I mention blogging?

7:44
AM
A thought about Labor Day: One of the current social fads is what we
might call "post-church Christianity." People are dropping out of
church, especially young people who may have been converted in
non-traditional settings. I must confess that much of what we see in the
Body of Christ is indeed very unattractive: anachronisms,
inconsistencies, hypocrisies. But I cannot agree that the solution is
dropping out. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are obligated as
believers to "stir one another up to love and good works." How can
refusing to meet with other Christians allow us to obey this command?
Each Christian is a building block in the temple of the church. Each is
necessary for the Body to grow. Each has a part to play. Sadly, the word
"work" has become a four-letter word in many of our churches. There are
too many shirkers and not enough workers. Even Jesus said the laborers
are few.

If you are a
dropout from church (for whatever reason, and you may have some VERY
good reasons!), my simple advice to you is this: Get to work. Jesus
said, "I will build My church," and He had all of us in mind as His
workers!

I heard a story
the other day of sibling familiarity that really outdoes any of my
own shameful antics when I was growing up. An elder sister put her
brother into the washing machine! An outraged mother found and
rescued the little guy a while later.

We can do the same
thing with Jesus. We can shove him into the washing machine. That
is, we become too familiar with him and the gospel. We hear it
regularly, we believe it and have been recipients of its power – but
we take it for granted. We have ceased to be amazed by it, and it
simply seems to wash over us these days.

7:19
AM
Potential Ph.D. students in New Testament need to read
this post by Nijay Gupta. It focuses, of course, on scholarship in
the UK. And it rightly emphasizes the importance of knowing everything
you can about your potential doctoral mentor. May I add two words?

1) Do not consider
studying with someone you have never met in person. Chemistry is a huge
part of the equation in my opinion.

2) Please do not
rule out taking a doctorate on the continent. This will require that you
speak another language fluently, but that is not a bad thing for someone
preparing for a lifetime of scholarly research and writing. Americans
are no longer flocking to Germany or Switzerland as they once did, but
opportunities still abound.

7:12
AM
Over at Primal Subversion, Sean takes another look at the
first imperative in the book of Philippians and asks whether its
political connotations have been duly noted. For what it's worth, Sean,
we rendered it "Live as good citizens" in the ISV. And I quite agree
that Paul has our counter-citizenship in mind (he otherwise uses the
terms "live" or "walk" for Christian behavior). Could anything have
greater significance to a Roman living in the colony of Philippi than to
"live as a good citizen"?

I remember when we
moved from Southern California to the tobacco fields of Granville
County, NC, 11 years ago to teach at SEBTS. The nearest hamlet to our
ranch had only two buildings in it: the Baptist church and the volunteer
fire department. I joined both -- as all "good citizens" of the
community did. The Bible teaches quite plainly that we are to be in the
world but not of the world, and I did what I could to identify with my
neighbors in order to reach them for Jesus. Society is not a burdensome
appendage to the Christian religion; it is where our faith is to
be lived out. The Philippians may be "saints" in union with Christ Jesus
(1:1), but they also reside in Philippi, and none of them could advance
the kingdom of God by standing aloof from their counterparts in the
world.

Sunday, September 6

4:28
PM
Congratulations to Biblical Archaeology Review on publishing its
200th issue. Be sure to read the
editor's remarks. Very nice retrospective indeed. For years Hershel
had me write a column called "Greek for Bible Readers" in BAR's sister
publication, Bible Review, which of course is now defunct. (Kudos to
Logos Bible Software for publishing its
archives.) So,
a thank you to Hershel and his staff for bringing to the attention of
simple folks like me important issues in archeology.

A Christian was
once asked, "Don't you belong to the Methodist Church?" "No," he
replied. "I am a member of a Methodist Church, but I belong to Christ."

2:30
PM
Arthur Sido, in an excellent post called
Why do we have seminaries?, asks, "Is
the 'Young man feels called to serve the church, young man goes to
seminary, young man gets hired as a pastor' model really healthy for the
church?" The question is a vitally important one. In his typically
breathless style, Arthur runs one idea into another with bewildering
speed. (That is not a put down; the apostle Paul did the same thing.)
But even if you have to read Arthur's post more than once to get his
message (as I did), please do so. I can promise you that it won't
interfere with your sanctification!

1:54
PM
One of my favorite bloggers
is back at it. Good to see you writing again, James. And for those of
you who are bit rusty and need to update your blog, take heart: God is
still in the business of jumpstarting our efforts.

1:40
PM
Had a double whammy at church today. First, brother Chris began a series
on prayer in Sunday School. Second, brother Jason started to teach
through the Acts (without wielding the "ax," I might add). Quotes I
jotted down:

"There is
nothing more vital to your Christian life than prayer" (Chris).

"We need to be
looking to the Scriptures so that we might understand God's plan for
today" (Jason).

Also, I've got to
give brother Joel a lot of credit for always setting the tone so well
for our gatherings by emphasizing mutual edification. Thank you, Joel!
Jesus said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another," and
when we link this with his following words we see that for disciples
today this means sacrificing ourselves on behalf of others. Surely that
should make love our constant priority. All I can say is that God is up
to something huge at Bethel Hill and Bec and I are glad to be a part of
it. I think of a Michelangelo working on a huge piece of rock.

When asked what he
was doing he would say, "I am releasing the angel that is imprisoned in
this marble." What a transformation occurs when the Master's hand is at
work! Becky and I can't wait to see where all of this leads us. It is a
miracle beyond comprehending how God can take useless, inanimate pieces
of human rock and transform them into what Peter calls "living stones."
Praise God Almighty!

8:12
AM
Kevin Skull recommends that we read
The Romans Debate. I concur. Perhaps the main question is whether or
not Romans is an occasional document -- that is, whether Paul wrote it
to respond to actual problems in the church. I think he most certainly
did, and the issue was one that dogged the early church: division. This
is true of our modern churches as well. The "household of God" includes
in its earthly membership all Christians of all ages, all levels of
education, all nationalities, all social strata, all tribes, etc. The
list is endless, and the need for unity obvious. Regardless of our race,
color, age, or denomination, we are bound to each other in a fellowship
that goes far beyond our stylish theological preferences and personal
convictions. Such is the message of Romans (see chs. 14-15) -- Jewish
Christians and Gentile Christians form ONE body in Christ. And we are to
work together for the Gospel!

7:52
AM
Just received this email:

Dr. Black,

You know how quotes get lodged in your brain? Something you wrote
over two years ago has been stuck in my head all this time, and I've
not been able to shake it. The shame is that I haven't done anything
about it either. You wrote

Do you have to be published to be
considered a scholar? For what it's worth, here are my two
lepta. To be a scholar is to be a thinker. To be a thinker is to
be a researcher. To be a researcher is to be a writer. And
whatever you think is worth writing is worth having somebody
other than yourself read. Does that make any sense? So to answer
the question: To me an unpublished scholar is an oxymoron.

I’m convinced that our love will
ultimately trump any argument. And as followers of Jesus, this is
how we are to be known. It’s not by how many articles we’ve
published. Nor how many degrees we’ve earned. Nor where we’ve
attended school. Nor how many members join our church. Nor how many
multi-site campuses we’ve started. We can do innumerable activities
“for the Lord”, but if they are done without love, they are all for
nothing (1 Cor 13:1-3). We must continually analyze our lives and
our participation within the community and ask, “How am I
demonstrating this love?”

7:22
AM
I want to remind everyone that my guest lecturer in Wednesday's theology
class is my colleague Alvin Reid, who is also the featured speaker at
this month's
Student Ministry Summit. His lecture on 1 Thessalonians begins at
2:00 in Adams 211. I hope he brings his snake. I really do. Please,
Alvin?

7:12
AM
Phil Whitehead recently had fun at the British Library. I had fun
reading his
report.

7:08
AM
Kudos to Peter Lopez for
teaching the book of Hebrews in his home church. I'm praying for
many more like him -- "laypeople" who love the Word and have the guts to
teach it, verse by verse. Bravo!

If you are given the chance, preach
the Word to the lost. If you want to invite them to the gathering of
the church, that is great, but it is not a substitute for
proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen!

6:55
AMThis is the sight
that greeted me this morning while having my devotions on the front
porch.

It is wonderful beyond words that, despite
our weaknesses and failings, God's mercies are new every morning. No
Christian ought to doubt that! The passage I was reading, by the way,
was 2 Thess. 3:8-13. Eugene Peterson renders this passage as follows:

Our orders—backed
up by the Master, Jesus—are to refuse to have anything to do with
those among you who are lazy and refuse to work the way we taught
you. Don't permit them to freeload on the rest. We showed you how to
pull your weight when we were with you, so get on with it. We didn't
sit around on our hands expecting others to take care of us. In
fact, we worked our fingers to the bone, up half the night
moonlighting so you wouldn't be burdened with taking care of us. And
it wasn't because we didn't have a right to your support; we did. We
simply wanted to provide an example of diligence, hoping it would
prove contagious.

Don't you remember
the rule we had when we lived with you? "If you don't work, you
don't eat." And now we're getting reports that a bunch of lazy
good-for-nothings are taking advantage of you. This must not be
tolerated. We command them to get to work immediately—no excuses, no
arguments—and earn their own keep. Friends, don't slack off in doing
your duty.

"Don't freeload. Pull your own weight.
Don't sit around on your hands. Work your fingers to the bone. Get to
work immediately -- no excuses, no arguments!"

Goodness! Sounds like your mother
speaking, doesn't it? In Christianity there is always the dual response
of hearing and doing. "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me." May
God give me open ears and obedient feet today -- and forgive me
for my sloth.

Saturday, September 5

7:20
PM
Looking forward to a visit tomorrow from Becky's sister Barbara and her
husband from South Carolina.

7:06
PM
Odds and ends: Nate and I spread manure...scavenged cedar posts at the
local saw mill...worked on the backyard fence...Liz and the boys dropped
off a new rooster...I cooked creamed tuna and rice for everyone...Nate
is bush hogging...Becky is in bed...I'm finishing my book on Custer.
Thankful for a good day. A couple of pix:

10:45
AM
Henry Drummond: "Don't touch Christianity unless you are willing to seek
the Kingdom of Heaven first. I promise you a miserable existence if you
seek it second" (Interpreter's Bible, vol. 3, p. 323).

10:34
AM
Another thought on Bible translations. I don't care whether someone uses
the KJV, NIV, or any other version. We honor God when we place His Word
above every other word. The tragedy is that we prefer crackers and
cheese when God's table is loaded with blessing.

10:22
AM
Thanking God today that when the outlook is darkest the uplook is
brightest.

9:22
AM
Bec and I spent the morning sipping coffee on the front porch and
talking about Ethiopia. We leave Oct. 1 for Dallas to speak in several
churches there as well as in Houston. We've also been invited to spend a
day at Houston Baptist University meeting with the
M.A. in Biblical Languages students and giving an Ethiopia
presentation. What an honor. This month we'll be at
Cresset Baptist Church in
Durham and Messiah Baptist Church
in Wake Forest giving updates and doing some preparation for next July's
trip to Ethiopia. The orientations for that trip will begin very soon.
The season for doing missions never ends. I have prayed with increased
earnestness that the Lord will provide us with the wisdom and strength
we need for the tasks at hand. I cannot describe the joy I have in God
when I work side by side with my wife for the kingdom. We are resolved
to continue this course until He says stop.

9:08
AM
Becky's Mercury Villager has been a great minivan but it's got over
235,000 miles on it. Becky needed a newer car for all the driving we'll
be doing back and forth to UNC. Jessie found the perfect car for us on
Craig's List, and yesterday Bec and I drove out to Hampton to get it.
It's got only 29,000 miles on it. Not bad for a 2006 Honda Odyssey. Note
the color. Becky's always wanted a red car, and we were happy to indulge
her. She deserves it.

8:32
AM
I've been wondering what the Better Bibles Blog would write about the
NIV controversy. Well, their last 4
entries answer that question. I suspect the brouhaha is only just
beginning.

8:08
AM
What's the purpose of a seminary? Some go in for knowledge and
specialize in theology. Some major on religious activity and social
concern. Some specialize in feeling, experience. Ideally the head, the
hand, and the heart should coexist happily together. There is only one
way to do this. What we know intellectually we must obey volitionally if
we are to be sound emotionally. I think all of us at SEBTS are working
hard to achieve such balance. I know we fall short. But when I read
something like this I am
greatly encouraged. If you decide to study with us you should know that
you will be challenged to honor God with your time and money, not just
your mind. We don't need more knowledge. We need wisdom. We need
guidance, and Jesus is the Way. In other words, we need to get on with
the large, positive, grand concern for which God called us. My constant
prayer is that our nation's seminaries would grow more and more to be
institutions that are synchronized with God's own heart. Let our burdens
reflect His burdens. Let our priorities be His. Amen?

6:57
AM
Jesus repeatedly emphasized that following Him meant radically changing
our priorities. What did He mean when He said, "Seek first the kingdom
of God"? Here are some ideas:

1) Seek first the
kingdom of God vocationally. Ask tough questions about your
employment. Are you where God wants you to be? If so, are you using your
occupation to advance God's kingdom?

2) Seek first the
kingdom of God maritally. Have a
Great Commission Marriage. Put the kingdom first in your married and
family life.

3) Seek first the
kingdom of God geographically. The issue of where we live has
everything to do with the kingdom. Let's be open to God's guidance.
Unlike our secular counterparts, we can no longer select a place to live
based merely on comfort, affordability, good schools, etc.

4) Seek first the
kingdom of God ecclesiologically. I strongly urge you to find a
church home that shares your urgency for the kingdom and global
missions. Traditional wisdom dictates that we are to seek a church on
the basis of buildings, programs, convenience, and, regrettably,
personalities. As a result, church life becomes inwardly-focused, and we
fail to become the presence of the kingdom in society. Recently Becky
and I joined a church in Roxboro, NC. We did so largely because of its
clear and consistent vision to be a part of the kingdom initiative of
God. It seeks to manifest the values of Jesus' upside-kingdom. It gives
high priority to missions. Our goal is to strive as authentically as
possible to incarnate the life and teachings of Jesus in our corporate
and individual lives.

5) Seek first the
kingdom of God financially. Jesus calls us to avoid the rat race
of consumerism and materialism. Let's reexamine our lifestyles to see
how we can free up dollars for the kingdom.

6) Seek first the
kingdom of God physically. Obesity and self-indulgence
characterize many American evangelicals. It never occurs to us that
avoiding overeating is a way to serve the kingdom. As disciples we are
called to set aside physical comfort and devote our bodies to God as
living sacrifices. I struggle constantly to keep my weight under
control. But I must maintain good physical condition if I am to be able
to walk long distances in Ethiopia.

7) Seek first the
kingdom of God ministerially. Every believer is a fulltime
"minister." Churches can do much more to utilize qualified volunteers
who essentially pay themselves to serve. We must change the emphasis in
our churches from hiring professional staff to equipping "laypeople" to
be the church.

8) Seek first the
kingdom of God institutionally. Let's ask, "How can we use our
corporate resources most effectively and sacrificially for the kingdom?"
Take our church buildings. Surely we can do a better job in constructing
and utilizing church properties so as to channel more resources into
missions and service to the needy. I once read of a congregation of
4,000 in Oregon that, instead of building a new sanctuary, established a
separate corporation to build a self-supporting convention hall that the
church uses free of charge. Another example: Missionary organizations
can separate overhead costs from money raised for missionaries. In other
words, money contributed to missionary causes would go entirely to these
causes, while all overhead costs (including salaries for executives)
would be raised separately.

9) Seek first the
kingdom of God intellectually. Has Christ's lordship had any
effect on your thought life? What you read? Your attitudes? Sometimes it
is easier to read books about the Scriptures than to read the Scriptures
themselves. What makes us think that commentaries or websites are more
important than the Word of God? We neglect the Bible to our own peril. I
often remind my students that 99 percent of what I know about God and
the Christian life I learned from reading my Bible rather than books
about the Bible. God does not ask us to forego reading books by human
authors (goodness, I've written my share of them), but His lordship is
not visible in our lives until we prioritize His Word.

These are some
practical ways by which we can seek first the kingdom of God. I'm sure
many others could be mentioned. Seeking first the kingdom of God means
that our time, our money, our very selves are available to God, to our
brothers and sisters in Christ, and to the world. It's not a matter of
simply attending church or participating in endless rounds of programs.
It's about changing the world by becoming what Jesus intended the church
to be: a servant to the world. "The church is only the church when it
exists for others," said Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Christ calls us to pour
our lives into the needy world that surrounds us. He promises us that as
we do this, we will find that His yoke of service is easy and His burden
is light. If you live this way, you will find His promise -- as Becky
and I have -- to be true.

6:45
AM
Yesterday at Bradford Hall we had a wonderful family reunion. Of the
canine variety, that is. Jon and Matthea Glass, along with Catherine,
Carter, and Caleb, brought their puppy Galana to visit with her parents
(Sheppie and Sheba) and sister (Dayda). Galana felt right at home; in
fact she ruled the roost (sorry for mixing metaphors). Here's the happy
family (clockwise from left): Dayda, Sheba, Galana, Jon, Catherine,
Matthea, Carter, Sheppie, and Caleb.

We took a walk to
visit the cows then had lunch together. I tell you, it was more fun than
flubber.

Friday, September 4

7:45
AM
Nate and Jess eventually want to get an outdoor pool for their kids.
Guys, I've got the perfect idea.

6:55
AM
Christianity Today takes a look at the relationship between development
work and evangelism in this post called
A Unifying Vocation. The essay raises more questions than it answers
in my opinion. Far too often Becky and I have seen well-meaning
evangelical organizations in Ethiopia sign agreements with the
government that permit them to build schools, construct hospitals, and
dig wells -- as long as they do NOT engage in any form of
evangelization. To us this form of missions is completely unacceptable.
The Great Commission tells us that we are to be witnesses for Christ, to
build His kingdom, to be activists in the cause of missions, right up to
the return of Jesus. Like so many other things in life, there is a
"being" and "doing" side to witnessing. These are meant to work in
unconscious harmony with each other. But the emphasis on boldness in the
Book of Acts should remind us that our main purpose is to be faithful
witnesses to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not just to be
do-gooders. How tragic to see a village well that has been constructed
by God's people but that has absolutely no Gospel witness! Incidentally,
this is one reason why Becky wrote about this subject in her essay
The Role of Humanitarian Aid in Building the Kingdom. Sadly, I
believe that off-balanced ideas about development work are actually
hindering the cause of Christ in Ethiopia rather than helping it.

Below: Evangelist
Solomon preaching at the Galana Clinic. The spiritual ministry is
central to the work of God in this health center in Southern Ethiopia.
By the way, this picture reveals something of the balance we seek to
achieve in our mission work. People are sitting comfortably in a
"waiting shelter" that we constructed to keep them from waiting in the
sun. Solomon works fulltime to see that all the patients are exposed to
the Gospel message through open air preaching, visitation, flannel graph
presentations, etc.

6:43
AM
Theological German has posted a wonderful quote from Karl Barth about
prophecy.

6:25
AM
Last night Nate and I listened to an old recording of Marcel Dupré
playing a piece he himself composed for organ: Cortege et Litanie.
It is quite unlike any other recording of that piece we've heard. It
raised in my mind an interesting question for which I have no answer:
Are subsequent performers under any obligation to perform a piece
exactly as the composer himself played it? In other words, is there a
modicum of "faithfulness to authorial intent" that comes into play -- we
might call it an "ethic of fidelity"? My intuition says yes, that we
have no right to take any liberties with the tempo, volume, etc. just as
we have no choice but to follow the notes as written.

If, for the sake of argument, there does
exist an ethic of fidelity when it comes to artistry, then what does
that say for our English Bible translations that ignore, say, the
rhetorical level of language and completely overlook the significant
rhetorical devices (assonance, paronomasia, chiasmus, etc.) used by the
original author? A good example is the alliteration with which the
Epistle to the Hebrews begins involving the letter pi. Or take the
Cretan poet that Paul cites in Titus. "Liars ever, men of Crete, savage
brutes that live to eat." This rendering is at least an attempt to
reflect the original poetry. This is quite a conundrum for me, but it's
too early to think about it.

Thursday, September 3

8:45
PM
Nolan just stopped by. How do you like his farmer's overalls?

8:22
PM
A huge shout out and thank you to the Collie and Evans families for
fixin' supper for Becky and me this evening. It was delicious. Right now
I'm saddling up to read a new book on the life of cavalry general George
Armstrong Custer.

2:35
PM
I wanted to take a minute and recommend to you some good websites.

I believe the most
exciting pilgrimage the people of God can embark on is to keep adjusting
and readjusting our lives to Christ. If a church is centered on anything
-- or anyone -- else, it is off balance. We ought to be scared to death
of doing this. This readjustment is a process, not a single step. It
takes constant attention and a whole lifetime to live and experience.

Are you ready for
some new, old, revolutionary ideas for your church? These websites will
help you. The great danger most of our churches face is not that we
don't do anything. We do plenty. The problem is that we don't do the
essential things. I hope you will take time to peruse these sites. May
they help you to chase harder after God than you've ever done before.

2:12
PM
Today we received this phenomenal email from Ethiopia. It's a follow-up
report about one of our evangelists who was beaten a few days ago.
Rejoice with us!

Dear Mama B,

Thank you so very much for
your prayers, quick and enthusiastic response to our evangelist
“________”. Thank you also for informing others to pray for the
evangelists.

Yesterday we had been to
“_______” to visit, encourage and comfort the evangelists; to your
surprise it was we not they are encouraged. They are very strong,
healthy and enthusiastic for the gospel. ______ said that “it
is nothing as compared to the work of Jesus”. He is too
strong and healthy; he never wants to stay on a bed even for a day.

Now he is working as usual
and as if nothing has happened to him.... I have also told your
message to them; you never imagine how much it encourages them.
Their face shines too much and told me to write you to take the
situation as very simple.

10:25
AM
Pastoral ministry is highly demanding. I constantly realize, however,
that the burdens we assume are often self-imposed. Trying to move toward
a more biblical view of work and ministry can be overwhelming. How
biblically ignorant I can still be! It's particularly hard when people's
expectations get in the way. So there is much room to rethink the
wineskins.

What does Paul say
about work and ministry? That's the assignment for next week in our New
Testament Theology class. As always, I'm doing the assignment myself.
Here are the verses I've gathered for my own inductive study. I think
they'll help me get the big picture. I have already written them out in
Greek but I'll list them for you in English:

1 Thess. 2:9: Don’t you remember, dear
brothers and sisters, how hard we worked
among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a
living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we
preached God’s Good News to you.

1 Thess. 4:11-12: Make it your goal
to live a quiet life, minding your own business and
working with your hands, just as we
instructed you before.Then people who are not Christians will
respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.

1 Thess. 5:12-13: Dear brothers and
sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work.
They work hard among you and give you
spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love
because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.

1 Cor. 15:10: But whatever I am
now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me—and
not without results. For I have worked harder
than any of the other apostles; yet it was not I but God who was
working through me by his grace.

2 Cor. 6:5: We have been beaten,
been put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked
to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without
food.

2 Cor. 11:27:
I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights.
I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I
have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.

Eph. 4:28: If you are a thief, quit
stealing. Instead, use your hands for good
hard work, and then give generously to others in need.

1 Cor. 9:1-8: Am I not as free as
anyone else? Am I not an apostle? Haven’t I seen Jesus our Lord with
my own eyes? Isn’t it because of my work that you belong to the
Lord? Even if others think I am not an apostle, I certainly am to
you. You yourselves are proof that I am the Lord’s apostle. This is
my answer to those who question my authority. Don’t we have the
right to live in your homes and share your meals? Don’t we have the
right to bring a Christian wife with us as the other apostles and
the Lord’s brothers do, and as Peter does? Or
is it only Barnabas and I who have to work to support ourselves?
What soldier has to pay his own expenses? What farmer plants a
vineyard and doesn’t have the right to eat some of its fruit? What
shepherd cares for a flock of sheep and isn’t allowed to drink some
of the milk? Am I expressing merely a human opinion, or does the law
say the same thing? For the law of Moses says, “You must not muzzle
an ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain.” Was God
thinking only about oxen when he said this? Wasn’t he actually
speaking to us? Yes, it was written for us, so that the one who
plows and the one who threshes the grain might both expect a share
of the harvest. Since we have planted spiritual seed among you,
aren’t we entitled to a harvest of physical food and drink? If you
support others who preach to you, shouldn’t we have an even greater
right to be supported? But we have never used
this right. We would rather put up with anything than be an obstacle
to the Good News about Christ.Don’t you realize that those
who work in the temple get their meals from the offerings brought to
the temple? And those who serve at the altar get a share of the
sacrificial offerings. In the same way, the Lord ordered that those
who preach the Good News should be supported by those who benefit
from it. Yet I have never used any of these
rights. And I am not writing this to suggest that I want to
start now. In fact, I would rather die than lose my right to boast
about preaching without charge. Yet preaching the Good News is not
something I can boast about. I am compelled by God to do it. How
terrible for me if I didn’t preach the Good News! If I were doing
this on my own initiative, I would deserve payment. But I have no
choice, for God has given me this sacred trust.
What then is my pay? It is the opportunity to
preach the Good News without charging anyone. That’s why I
never demand my rights when I preach the Good News.

1 Tim. 5:17-18: Elders who do their
work well should be considered worthy of double honor, especially
those who work hard at both preaching
and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You must not muzzle an ox to
keep it from eating as it treads out the grain.” And in another
place, “Those who work deserve their pay!”

Acts 20:33-35: “I have never coveted
anyone’s silver or gold or fine clothes. You
know that these hands of mine have worked to supply my own needs and
even the needs of those who were with me. And I have been a
constant example of how you can help those in need by working hard.
You should remember the words of the Lord Jesus:
‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Wow! This is very
convicting to me. It seems that the Gospel fares better against outright
opposition than against our frivolous and slothful lifestyles. A Paul
slaving away night and day to support himself while doing ministry is a
laughingstock. I am all for unity but today "togetherness" seems mired
up in "conformity." Is the status quo worth maintaining when it comes to
our work ethic? That's the question we'll be asking next Wednesday.
Please pray that the Holy Spirit will guide our discussion.

10:12
AM
Paul had healed many people in his ministry but he left Trophimus ill in
Miletus. Frankly I am a bit relieved to read that. I am encouraged by
the fact that Paul does not have one unbroken record of success. It
reminds me that God is absolutely sovereign when it comes to physical
healing. There is always an element we can't explain that must be left
in the hands of God. Right now I must make room for a Miletus in my
path.

Which brings me to
Becky. Her oncologists are aware that her cancer is a very fast growing
type and that it has already begun traveling through her body. They have
therefore suggested a very aggressive approach to chemotherapy. They've
scheduled Becky's first treatment for Thursday, Sept. 18 at UNC. She
will stay overnight (and possibly longer) for observation. I will of
course stay with her the whole time.

I wonder: Was
Trophimus ever healed? We don't know. But he could have recovered later.
I hope he did. Perhaps Becky will also. That too is up to our sovereign
God, not us.

So we pray. Becky's
healing. Strength and courage. The work in Ethiopia in our absence.
Faith, hope, love.

Wednesday, September 2

7:40
PM
Next week in New Testament Theology our guest lecturer will be my
colleague Alvin Reid. Alvin has a fantastic Great Commission website.
His goal is to see God do something big in the hearts and souls of
students across this nation and around the world. His speaking schedule
leaves me breathless. The students he reaches are, I believe, going to
become an army of on-fire teenagers who will set the pace for revival
and transform their culture by reaching every teenager they know with
the timeless message of the Gospel. What's really great is that I get to
have him in my class next week. In the meantime, check out Alvin's
latest essay called A Great
Commission Seminary. As Alvin notes, SEBTS is certainly not the only
seminary with its arms around the world, but it's the place where God
has called us to teach. Speaking personally, I can think of no greater
honor.

6:47
PMA reminder: My beginning grammar is available in electronic formfrom Logos Bible
Software. I'm not surprised that Greg Heiser of Logos fame is using the
electronic edition in his upcoming class, "Greek
with Heiser." Go Greg! Now, when are the rest of you scholars out
there going to offer a Greek class in your church?

6:42
PM
You simply must listen to my beloved president Danny Akin's
message in chapel yesterday on the life of James Fraser, former
missionary to China. (Notice I said "must." My clout is derived from the
authority vested in me as a manure-mucking farm boy from Nelson,
Virginia.) Fraser died in China from malaria at the age of 52 just
before the birth of his third child. As Danny said, most in the chapel
audience probably never heard the "James Fraser" before. However, when I
was a student at Biola in the early 70s, Geraldine Taylor's biography of
Fraser,
Behind the Ranges, was required reading in all of the missions
classes there. If you are looking for a missionary biography that is
profound in depth and prophetic in element, this is the book.

Corrie ten Boom once
said, "The first step on the way to victory is to recognize the enemy."
Our enemy, as Fraser so clearly understood, is our prayerlessness and
lack of faith. Satan operates in the realm of the heart, the will, the
conscience, and the desire. But God has promised that the devil's
attacks can be turned back. It was through prayer that James Fraser
conquered his doubts, his fears, and even his severe bouts with
depression. He saw his first converts only after 5 long years of prayer.
Today the Lisu church numbers over 100,000. Christ's love compelled him
– left him no choice, really – and today that same love is the
inextinguishable fuel that sends Becky and me to Ethiopia and countless
other Christians to serve Him all over the world. Fraser looked with
Spirit-inspired eyes into the heart of God, and Christ's love propelled
him forward. May that same God and that same Jesus do the same for each
of us today.

By the way, would you
please join me in praying for President Akin as he has surgery on
Friday?

6:36
PM
"The
Battle for the Gospel" is the title of Scot McKnight's upcoming lecture
series at Ashland Theological Seminary. The dates are October 26-27. For
a .pdf of the event, go
here.

6:31
PM
Speaking of internet video,
You Tube
features Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. As a trumpet player
I am amazed at the difficulty of this piece. But the NYP disappoints
not. The trumpets sound so epic. I never cease to be amazed how Copland
can weave such beautiful musical tapestries using so few notes. The
piece ends with chord changes that are completely unpredictable. The
piece is simply shocking in its beauty.

6:26
PM
Teaching from the book of Hebrews? This
You Tube would make a great intro.

6:22
PM
Special thanks to my colleague Andreas Köstenberger for lecturing in our
New Testament Theology class today on the Gospel of John, which one
scholar has gone so far as to call the "Maverick Gospel." It was an
excellent survey of the issues as well as the big picture. For more on
Andreas's current writing activities, see the recent interview at
Broadcast Depth.

6:16
PM
I encourage you to check out the latest issue of the
McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry. Lots of good stuff here,
including an essay titled "Who Is the 'Woman' in 1 Timothy 2?', which
concludes that the best translation of gune in this controversial
passage is "wife," and another article called "Losing Christianity: A
New Testament Scholar's Fall from Faith," which argues that Bart
Ehrman's recent books are more an apology for his de-conversion than the
presentation of any useful information.

6:12
PM
Kary Oberbrunner talks about the inevitability of change in his essay
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Being Progressive in a Stagnant Church.
I think he makes some excellent points. Too often we live as though
imperfection were the standard, whereas God says, "Let us continue to be
carried along to maturity" (so the Greek of Heb. 6:1). We can't expect
anything of ourselves, but we can expect everything of God. I don't
think He's very happy when we settle for a smug and comfortable
acceptance of substandard living.

6:06
PM
My former colleague at Talbot School of Theology, Mike Wilkins
(professor of New Testament), returned to Vietnam after 40 years. You
can read his moving testimony
here. Mike writes:

When we are 19 our entire life
stretches out before us. We can't see too far into our future and
know what impact the events of our youth will have upon our later
life. My recent return to Vietnam was a blessing as I was able to
look back and see clearly how God has been at work in my life in the
last 40 years, helping me to recover from the trauma of war and
leading me into the unimaginable blessing of being a Christian
professor at this wonderful place called Biola University. And
hopefully I can be a testimony to young men and women returning from
their own traumas of war and help them follow the lead of Jesus to
recovery in their lives.

Man there's a lot
of
wisdom here. Mike's testimony reminds me that great soldiers are
developed in battle, not in swivel chairs and comfortable offices. It
took the grindstone of Vietnam to sharpen an axe. I encourage all of us
to remember that the world, not the church, is our proving ground.

6:02
PM
A student sends along this fantastic poem on the upside-down kingdom of
Jesus. It's called
The Valley of Vision.

Lord, high and
holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by
mountains of sin I behold Thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that
the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the
broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the
rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to
wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the
place of vision. Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest
wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me
find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my
sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in
my valley.

6:00
PM
Just back from school. It's great to see so much activity on campus.
It's as if a God-sized defibrillator jolted us back into life. The
summer was very quiet, but all that has changed. Welcome back students.
Let's make a difference for the kingdom!

By the way, my
secretary sent this "edible bouquet" home with me for Becky. Isn't it
gorgeous? Thank you, Miss Phyllis, for your thoughtfulness. Becky loves
it!

Tuesday, September 1

6:55
AMOff to school. Let's
see if I can remember this time to take my home cooked meals with me to
campus. Last week I forgot them and subsisted on canned soups for two
days.

6:51
AMThe latest issue of
New Testament Studies promises to be well worth reading. For an overview, go to
Michael Whitenton's blog. And heartiest congratulations, Michael, on
your first article in NTS!

6:46
AMFrom the Kyria blog
comes this essay on
Jesus-Style Service. Like the author, I too am tempted to cry out,
"I'm not your servant!" But that's exactly what I am in Christ. I exist
to serve my students, not them me. I exist to serve Becky, not her me. I
exist to serve the world, not it me. No Christian has the luxury of
saying, "I am happy to be a son, a saint, a sinner saved by grace -- but
I would rather not be a servant." We do not have that option. God please
help my students to become more like Jesus not because of what I say but
because of how I live!

6:36
AMAlmost forgot to
mention a huge blessing. Last night as I drove home from Greek class at
The Hill it was my joy to listen to a live performance by the North
Carolina Symphony of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring on WUNC.
I wanted to cry, dance, and shout praises to God all at the same time.
Never have I resonated more with a piece of classical music, which
rightly earned for the composer a Pulitzer Prize. I could visualize the
young family as they built their home in the 1800s and passed through
the seasons of life. My own life seemed to pass before my eyes -- its
good days and bad, its blessings and challenges, its pleasures and
suffering. Appalachian Spring is hauntingly beautiful and uplifting,
especially when played so passionately. A loud "bravo," then, to the NC
Symphony Orchestra and its conductor, Grant Llewellyn, for a magnificent
job marred only by the incessant coughing of one or two people in the
audience.